Blog posts

**Hustle Culture Is Trembling**

Bianca Khor

MSc Management

Sounds familiar?

Ever heard of “the hustle”? Maybe you could try picturing this…

You wake up at 6.30 am despite feeling both mentally and physically exhausted from a long hard yesterday. You check your email for work updates on your phone before (and even after) brushing your teeth and getting dressed. You then rush over your breakfast (if a single cup of expresso counts as one) and head straight over to your university campus, where you spend the entire day working through lectures, revising intensely in between classes, followed by drowning yourself in extracurricular activities that you are participating in for the sake of having something that looks good on your CV.

The First Few Weeks of My UROP

Yee Tong Siow

MEng Mechanical Engineering

After a year of remote learning, it feels weird that the first time I am conducting any physical activities in college is during the summer break. Earlier in the year, I decided that for this summer break, I want to venture into research and development, to be able to gain more technical knowledge while ensuring that my summer break remains fruitful while I stay in London. Therefore, I have decided to sign up for a UROP.

A UROP stands for Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme. Through this programme, undergraduates get to work on different research projects with different professors focusing on different areas of research.

Sitting for Remote Exams

Yee Tong Siow

MEng Mechanical Engineering

The pandemic has greatly shifted the way we learn and the way we are assessed. GCSEs have been cancelled to reduce the risk of spreading the virus and classes have been shifted to an online setting for most of the year too. With the limited amount of physical interaction, we have had with our peers and our teachers, students all around the world have found themselves with an extra task of adapting to the new learning setting on top of keeping up with their studies.

University life has been greatly shifted as well. The Imperial campus has been closed for most of the year apart from the central library.

What is a UROP?

Yee Tong Siow

MEng Mechanical Engineering

As summer is approaching, this is the time of the year where students are all panicking about finding a summer internship to ensure that they have a fruitful summer. Students often search for summer internships for a few reasons. Some students would like to use summer internships to gain more exposure to the different industries they are hoping to land a graduate job in, as experiences in industry allows them to apply the knowledge they have learned throughout the year and to enhance their passion for the course too. Employees love to see students who go an extra mile to learn something, and it increases your chances of getting hired significantly.

More Money Tips and Tricks I Learnt At University

Medicine

It is that time of year again. Student finance applications just opened for next year and that got me thinking about money. I am back at it again with more financial tips and tricks that have helped me at university so far. This part has more tangible things you can do about working, saving and investing your hard-earned cash.

One of the first things I did as soon as I was eligible was sign up for a student bank account. These often come with good discounts and offers. Who doesn’t like free money? Santander has 1/3 off 16-25 railcards and 15% cashback with retailer offers (something I have used when at Costa, ordering of Just Eats or buying shoes from JD).

The Curse of The Last-Paper Syndrome

Bianca Khor

MSc Management

Warning: The following actions documented below have been performed by a “professional exam taker”. Please do not try this at home. Viewer discretion advised.

Glossary

Last paper syndrome: “A phenomenon wherein you know that you still have your last test tomorrow but your brain is already in vacation mode and you cannot concentrate on studying.” (Source: Reddit)

Date: A random Thursday in April

It is 3.06 pm at the point of writing. I… have my final exam to sit for tomorrow at 1 pm sharp, but there’s one funny little problem – I am doing the complete opposite of what I am supposed to be doing right now.

Thoughts On The Fear of Failure

Medicine

My end of year exams start next week (six exams in three weeks so not super intense), and it’s usually around this time of year that the fear of failure tends to peak for me. Like many others I am sure, I struggle to believe in my own abilities. Impostor syndrome is very real, and a hurdle we have to deal with.

I usually try to focus on my own work and not compare with my peers about how much work we are each getting done or test scores. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and all our situations are different.

Are Grades The Only Thing That Matters?

Yee Tong Siow

MEng Mechanical Engineering

It is widely known across the world that Asians tend to put a lot of emphasis on their children’s grades, as if the straight As on the report card act as tickets to a good future. After all, we are called ‘A’-sians and not ‘B’-sians. Being brought up in an Asian culture, I was constantly sent for plenty of extra classes out of school. These classes range from academic tuition classes to extracurricular classes such as piano lessons, art classes, etc. Looking back now, I find it quite crazy that a child like me was trained to learn every hour of the day, and trained to think that the grades on my report card are the only things that I can be proud of.

I Got My Conditional Offer to Imperial. What Now?!

Yee Tong Siow

MEng Mechanical Engineering

Before I jump right in, I will start by explaining about why I decided to write this blog post. As Imperial has begun sending their conditional offers to students from all around the world, students have been overly excited on planning their next phases in life. Being a student ambassador from Imperial, I have begun receiving loads of messages from students telling me about their plans, asking about accommodations and life in London in general. On the other hand, there are also students who are anxious about moving into a new city and making new friends. Therefore, I have decided the write this blog post hoping that this can help ease your transition to your new phase in life!

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.

Learn more about life at Imperial

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