Blog posts

Reflections from the Dissection Room

Kinan Wihba

Medicine

Cadaveric dissection is becoming obsolete among medical schools. It used to feel like a rite of passage but as part of the curriculum update at Imperial, 1st year students solely use prosections for their anatomy learning.

Whether you have seen a dead body before or not, it seldom prepares you to what you will see in the dissection room (DR). Over the last four terms of medical school, we dissected the entire human body so I decided to write a free-form reflection on my experience emotionally.

The reactions from students in the first session ranged from being absolutely fine to fainting.

Going to space with the Space Society

Max Gracyk

Computing

When you’re a student at Imperial, you don’t have to stick just to classes and coursework. You can do many extracurricular activities by joining one of over 300 clubs and societies. As a space enthusiast, I’ve decided to get involved in the Space Society this year.

More specifically, I’ve joined the CubeSat team which meets every Monday evening. Our aim is to make a satellite (for the UKSEDS Satellite Design Competition) which studies a hostile lunar-like environment. I’m currently in the Sensors & Data Handling group responsible for choosing, programming and obtaining meaningful data from sensors.

Here’s what we’ve done so far…

Hidden gems in Huxley

Max Gracyk

Computing

Huxley Building is on the South Kensington campus and is the main building for computing students. Having been coming to Huxley every day for over a year now, I know by heart how to navigate through the most important points there. However, there are some rooms in the restricted lab area (which I should be most familiar with!) I haven’t really noticed or used until recently and are very useful, either for working or well-being. These are my subjective hidden gems in Huxley.

Design Week – 2nd Year Mech Eng

Max Ting

Mechanical Engineering

Design week, the infamous week that we’ve all been hearing about since the start of the year. For those of you who do not know what Design Week is, it’s essentially a whole week dedicated to the Design and Manufacture module. In one week, all teams will have to design and complete a product for one of the 3 given problems. Yeah it’s crazy. Previously all design projects span for the term but now we will be doing all that in within one week.

Previously, it’s known to be the week where students compete to see who needs the least sleep but now the department has made significant changes to the structure of the week; having deadlines and tasks to be submitted by the end of each day and it’s godsend.

The London Coffee Festival

Kinan Wihba

Medicine

I love coffee. I drink coffee every single day and will probably do for the rest of my life <3. This is why I was beyond excited when I found out about the London Coffee Festival (LCF). I remember buying tickets with my friend last year during a sleep deprivation-induced haze- coursework life :). It ended up being one of the best experiences I have had in London so far.

The LCF takes place in the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane. This year marks its tenth anniversary and it is one of the biggest gatherings for coffee lovers in Europe!

2020 Vision – A Letter To Myself

Elizabeth Chan

Biochemistry

Reflecting upon my achievements last year and setting new goals for this year

Taking advantage of the New Year spirit is a great way to self-reflect and regain motivation for what you want in life. My goals last year were,

  1. Good work-life balance
  2. Spend more time with family
  3. Emotionally impartial when talking to people and completing daily tasks
  4. Cook more
  5. Eat healthily
  6. Be fluent in Python
  7. Be happy with what I do (biochemistry/AI)
  8. Attend social networking, conferences, follow science trends

so how do they tally up this year?

The good news is I’ve subconsciously managed to complete more than half of those goals despite my depression telling me otherwise, showing that we continue to grow as a person every day even when you don’t notice it.

My Biggest Regret

Mathematics and Statistics

Disclaimer: This is probably the most real I’ve ever gotten in these posts

(Don’t make the same mistake I did, please)

A trip down memory lane

Throughout my time at Imperial I have been documenting my time through these posts. In my current emotionally fragile state, dreading the idea of leaving the comfort that has become Imperial, I took a trip down memory lane reading over everything I seem to have been a part of at uni. From Netball, wellbeing, MathSoc and the RCSU, I have kept myself fairly busy, with my volunteer roles for the Union taking a forefront in my daily life.

#FindTheBalance: Budgeting Tips

Sophie Blagg

Medical BioSciences

Top Tips to Manage your Money

In heart of Imperial’s recent campaign for Student Money Week I thought I would add a few of my own tips that help me manage and budget my money effectively. The #FindTheBalance campaign run by the university gave some really helpful tips and advice from Student Finance Services and from current students. Here I have compiled some of the most helpful and achievable ideas in one place, so you can come back and reflect should you need to throughout the year.

Keep a Spending Log

It doesn’t have to be pretty and artsy like the ones you see people spend their life designing in bullet journals, but I find it really helps to make a note of everything you spend each week and calculate your weekly outgoings.

Getting out of London: 3 Trips

Emma Tipton

Enviromental Technology

As an international student, I feel the need to see as much as I can while I’m here in the UK. And although I love living in London, I will readily admit that sometimes it’s nice to get out of the city. Fortunately, this island is well-connected by rail, which I’ve found allows for a variety of inexpensive day or weekend trips. And, perhaps less fortunately, I get to indulge my amateur travel-blogger side here on this site.  

Dover 

My first daytrip upon arriving to the UK was to Dover, an hour or so to the southeast. I didn’t know much about Dover beyond some vague notion of white cliffs, but that was enough for me. 

Yes even a Science and technology university can do art! 

Marine Coispeau

Biotechnology

Science. E=mc^2? Fourier Transform? Michaelis Menten kinetics?

Too often people dissociate Art from Science and Technology almost as if it were a field only accessible to the white blouses, natural scientists and engineers. In fact what people tend to forget is that Art is a major driving force of advances in both Science and Social Sciences. Not only is it a mean of communication, education (figures, graphic designs) but it very much impacts how we understand and tackle modern problems. The emergence of biodesigns to promote sustainable fashion through the use of bacterial strains or adaptive building material reflect this. When exposed to the same environment daily, we often tend to forget what actually precisely constitutes it out of habitude.

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