A lot of very cool opportunities arise from being a blogger. Last year I was interviewed for an America magazine on education, had one of my photos used on the cover of a Danish book and became the poster-boy for the EEE department.

My last blog post was a quick update while I was killing time before badminton. I was thinking about how I’ve changed in my approached to work and then linked it back to my internship and the things I learnt there. I didn’t look over it nearly enough and I don’t think it was as amusing as what I could have produced, had I more time. Nevertheless, this quick post led to me standing in front of around 50 students in a big lecture theatre, talking about my experience at Apple.

To put it quickly, the lovely people in the Undergraduate office in my department read the blog post and thought that my words about internships might interest other students. Subsequently, those words appeared on the careers area of my departmental website. There also happened to be an internship talk soon, in which the aforementioned lovely people spoke to interested students about applications, CVs and all the tools necessary to land a profitable summer. Natural next step was to ask me to talk.

I know to a lot of you, this won’t seem particularly significant. Presenting in front of tens or even hundred of people is something that a lot of intelligent Imperial students are very good at. Dazzling the crowd with their majestic linguistic adroitness and phlegmatic vocals (yes, a thesaurus was used). I am not one of those people. In a small crowd I can hold my own, but I find that when presented with 19 people or more (hereby known as Chris’ constant), I tend to go silent. If forced into a situation where I am required to speak, my legs and hands begin to be driven at their resonant frequency and my eyes widen enough to permanently alter the width of my nose. In summary: “I get crazy nervous”.

This talk would only be five minutes and would effectively be me reciting the same thing I’ve told everyone I know, indirectly know and made eye contact with in the past 3 weeks, since working for Apple; so I really had no reason to be nervous. Even so, a small part of me always assumes the worst, so the idea of wetting myself, swearing and then running off crying mid-speech was, in my mind, becoming more feasible by the minute.

Fortunately it went really well. While I still adopted all the fidgeting and “rabbit in headlights” eyes I am accustomed to, I don’t think too many people noticed. Beginning the speech with: “Hi I’m Chris and I spent my summer working for a small fruit company called Apple” really did grab their attention and got me off to a good start.

It’s going to take a while to get me to relax when doing big talks, but it’s something I really need to get used to and is certainly something that anyone can achieve with practice. Plus, with all the things I am taking on this year, practice is certainly one thing I can certainly expect to get. As for the foul mouth and urination, they’re just risks I’ll have to take, one talk at a time.

Thanks for reading,

Chris xx

I’ve picked up a number of, what a younger Chris would call, bad habits since my time in the working world. Last year, I was typical: scattering problem sheets and lecture notes on the floor, dealing with them based on which one is most visible when I’m feeling productive; entrusting the general knowledge of my coursemates to maintain my timetable; and, of course, being completely unaware of coursework until the deadline is within the conceivable future.

All that has changed and I’m now disgustingly organised. My life is dictated by iCal – colourful blocks representing the kind of event and when I am to attend it. Automagically synced to some online server, so no matter how technologically absent I find myself, I always know what’s on my trusty calendar. My Mail client is filled with several accounts, all active and for a different purpose, each one with its unique signature, whether it’s “3rd Year Rep”, “Apple Campus Rep – Imperial” or simply “Chris xx”. I have become a businessman and the colourful converses on my feet are the only things keeping me from going insane.

At this point, I reflect on the two paragraphs I have written and try to come up with a point to the story. Is there any need to put this up on the blog? In this case, probably not, since it appears to be the foul ranting of an old(ish) man. But dig deeper and you can see it’s me talking about the value of an internship.

Prior to my time at Apple, I would consider myself a brain with no direction. A good, tangible mind that could absorb maths, decode programming languages and spontaneously combust at the slight glimpse of Medicine. I’m at Imperial, so I knew I was smart, I just didn’t have confidence to back that up.

At Apple, I faced deadlines, presentations and spontaneous meetings with various places in the world. I experienced real life pressure which would have made the old Chris wilt and hide. But the constant internal desire to impress and succeed pushed me to be more creative, energetic and malleable than I’ve ever been before. I now approach everything with a slight level of professionalism and a new-found burst of confidence, which is really making itself useful at a time when I’m juggling: coursework, ISE events, societies after iPods, EESoc events and all the other stuff posted on iCal.

First year will change your social life so quickly and so definitively, you will emerge a better, more independent person. A proper internship will change your professional perspective and show you the light that you’ve spent your entire educational history racing towards. No matter how big and how insurmountable anything I do from this point on seems to be: I know, it will never be as petrifying as a presentation to Steve.

Thanks for reading,

Chris xx

Thanks for reading,

Chris xx

Another year, and another wave of new students hit the shores of Imperial College London. Last year I decided to grab a fruity cocktail and go in-land for my new (academic) years celebrations. This year, much to the sacrifice of every, now-aching, muscle in my body, I grabbed a surf board and decided to face the thalassic swell face-on.

On Monday was my departments buddies lunch. A chance for the freshers to meet some of the more seasoned members of the EEE department and vice-versa. As someone who rarely gets to impart wisdom obtained in his course, I jump at the chance to be helpful and scare first-years senseless in equal measure. I arrived late and was thrown straight into the deep end as I began distributing the welcome packs to all the fresh faces. After sorting through named envelopes and ensuring each of the 400 new “Chen’s” got their desired pack, I went upstairs to assume my role as a buddy. The buddy system is great in principle. The first years are split into groups of around 3, each one getting their own member of one of the higher years, to consult if they need help with anything. They also get a tour of the department, where we can talk about all the secret things that the academics like to withhold. This year, I had no assigned people to locate so I, quite happily, became the “Angelina Jolie of the EEE department” and adopted any strays to, possibly, a better life. This resulted in me giving three separate tours and getting 7 optimistic young hopefuls, all of whom I hope to help far more then the neglected buddies I had last year.

Tuesday rolled around and every society had to abandon their 12 hour sleeping pattern to set up for Fresher’s Fair. Freshers Fair is effectively a college wide car-boot sale where every society tries to get as many new members as possible. It is a mad rush in every part of the campus and a great place to stock up on stationary for another year. This year, I had my own stall as Apple Campus Rep, which I ran with a great deal of help from the people I worked with at Apple (especially Fernando). My job was to advertise the Apple Educational Discount we get here and get as many people on my spam mailing list as possible (one of whom will win a free iPod Nano!). A little unexpected pleasure was meeting a few people who recognised me from my blog. While campus stardom is an inevitable fate for us bloggers, it really isn’t the intention for why we do this and getting such positive feedback is the most uplifting experience one can really get around campus. Thank you to everyone who came up to me on Tuesday, and to all the lovely people who comment regularly, I wish I could give each of you an iPod Nano, but unfortunately, you’ll have to make do with a hug

While it was a great deal of fun and an amazing experience meeting so many people in such quick succession, I left feeling pains in muscles I wasn’t fully aware of and immediately collapsed on my bed for a good 10 hours. The experience of the freshers fair stall is certainly one I think everyone should try. However, I don’t think I ever want to do that again!!

Thanks for reading,

Chris xx