Lucie Studena

The last year on campus

Lucie Studena

PhD Bioengineering

A bit over a year ago, our campus has completely shut down. It’s been quite a stressful situation with lots of changes and uncertainty. Lots of countries around the world have started their lockdowns much earlier while we have kept coming to work for considerable time longer. I was working on a few ambitious experiments and finally started gathering some results for my PhD. And then, almost out of the blue, the university shut down within just a few days.

The university actually shut down slightly earlier than the national lockdown came. I received a special permission from the head of the department to finish my running experiments.

London life on a budget – part 1

Lucie Studena

PhD Bioengineering

To be honest, I have been reluctant to apply for undergraduate studies for any of the universities in London. There were multiple reasons for it – I didn’t feel like living in a bigger city than Prague where I come from. But another large reason was fear about financial matters. London is known to be expensive and my parents were already very worried about me taking a student loan as that is not common in my home country (as we don’t pay tuition fees). As an EU student, I wasn’t allowed to take a loan for living expenses either.

I can never know whether it would have been fine for undergraduate studies as I didn’t study in London but I came here for my PhD.

London life on a budget – part 2

Lucie Studena

PhD Bioengineering

Hi everyone! In my last blog, I have started to share some tips for living on a budget in London. I have realised it’s too much for a single post so here is part two of my post! Head over to the first part if you would like to read a bit about accommodation. In this part, I will talk about transport, food and groceries, household equipment, free time and potential part time jobs with the university.

Coming to the transport around London, I personally believe the tube is quite expensive. I can’t remember when I last used the tube, it must have been very long before COVID-19 appeared here.

What more is there at Imperial than studying?

Lucie Studena

PhD Bioengineering

What is your imagination of university life or it was before you came to one? Is it really hard work and nothing but reading books and practicing maths? Partying every day of the week? Meeting lots of new people and learning new hobbies all the time? Difficult exams with a hangover and sleepless nights?

Well, it depends on you. I met many different kinds of students at Imperial. Obviously, student life has changed a fair bit since the COVID-19 pandemics but we all hope we can come back to our old lifestyles soon. I think British universities are a bit different from what I know of central-European universities.

The journey towards an Imperial PhD course

Lucie Studena

PhD Bioengineering

From the beginning…

Hi everyone! I am Lucie, a PhD student in Bioengineering (synthetic biology and metabolic engineering specialisation) at Imperial. As this is a new blog, I thought my first post should tell you something about me, my career decisions and reasons for coming here. I would also like to share how my search for PhD courses and applying to Imperial looked like in case you found that useful. I think my way of getting here might be quite typical in the fact it’s atypical. There is no one way or recipe to get to a certain career or a PhD degree and often it’s lots of trial and error.

Learn more about life at Imperial

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