I haven’t blogged in a while, and  was hoping to before the new bloggers started blogging (say blog again… blog), but here it is, better late than never! I’ve not been up to much – just coming off medication and starting treatment (oh, and UC was on the TV, but the less said about that the better ) – but I did want to say a huge THANK YOU to all my readers and commenters. I’ve not been the best blogger, and I wish I could have done a lot of things differently, but you’ve made it a lot of fun and made many of my days with your comments and support.

Now, time for the shameless plug! My new website is here – apologies for the vanity domain name, but it is my personal blog and portfolio. I hope that will be a bit better than this blog and you’ll enjoy reading it – if you’re reading this, that is!

Once again, thank you, and if you’re at Imperial I hope to meet you when I go back!

Well, I’m not going to be at Imperial next year.

Okay, so here’s what happened: you probably read that I’ve been having problems this year. That resulted in me having to take a couple of resits (they were due to be today, in fact), so I’d been studying as much as I could over the summer holidays. However, it got to Sunday evening and it really hit me that even if I scraped through (which was the best I could hope for) I’d come back in the new academic year still ill and still behind, so I’d end up getting even more ill and more behind. It took a conversation with my best friend to convince me that taking a year out wouldn’t result in utter humiliation and another with my personal tutor to show it was pretty much my only realistic option, so I came to Imperial on Monday to meet with my personal tutor, the senior tutor and various other people.

I’ve actually been amazed at how simple it was to sort everything out. I was scared I’d have to argue my case in front of a panel of judges who would decide whether or not I was just making it up to cover chronic laziness, but all I’ve had to do academics-wise is fill out one final request for mitigation and send a few e-mails. Kudos to the physics department! Clubs-wise it’s been a bit more tricky – I stupidly stood for positions back when I was being optimistic about my recovery – but it’s getting sorted. I’m quite looking forward to getting my first proper break in three years!

Don’t worry, it’s not like the ending of It’s a Boy Girl Thing, the worst ending of any film ever. Also, I will be back and blogging next year on my personal site, if you’re interested. A link will go up just as soon as I get everything together…

(Can’t remember if I mentioned, but I’m also on Twitter @courtney_cspark – the “cspark” is for Creative Spark, which a scheme I’m part of that I think I’ve mentioned before. Either way, check out the site – Ignition* is a great initiative!)

ETA: Yes, I do expect to be back at Imperial next year! I briefly flirted with the idea of finishing my degree through the Open University, but I miss Imperial and all who sail in her too much…

Congratulations if you got the A-Level results you wanted! Hugs if you didn’t, but remember it’s not the end of the world by any means.

I was going to write a freshers’ guide, but fellow blogger Corrie wrote a piece that says it all better than I would have. So, instead, I’m writing a list of things I didn’t expect when I arrived at Imperial! (Some are silly, some are serious; the most serious seem to have accumulated at the bottom, like some kind of opposite brazil nut effect. Only with my blog. Which is sometimes a bit nuts, I will grant you.)

1. There are more girls than I expected

In my year the ratio of male:female students is 2:1 – the largest proportion of female students ever! The college as a whole is also 2:1, with subjects like medicine and biology balancing out engineering and computing. Medics had to be good for something, amirite?

(Disclaimer: Also, I didn’t realise there would be any rivalry between medics and the rest of college. There is. Also also, I’m joking, please don’t send me hate mail.)

2. There are more posh people than I expected

According to a quick Google search, over 40% of Imperial students went to an independent school. This isn’t a bad thing at all (I like to think the irritating people would have been irritating regardless of their background), but it was a surprise to me.

3. You will, at some point, be sucked into to the apathy field

For me, it was when I realised I was a week away from the summer holidays and I still hadn’t joined the gym, amongst other things. In addition, when trying to get people to join into Amnesty campaigns, plus going to the student conference and hearing about what other universities had been able to do!

4. You won’t spend your evenings having tea and crumpets with the Queen and your weekends playing croquet

Okay, I made that up. But I did expect to do more sight-seeing than I have. I may have to make a things Courtney must see before postponing reality further with a PhD in another city unless she decides to stay in London in which case yay more time for tea and crumpets with the Queen list.

6. You can be as geeky as you wish

Seriously, we have the entire spectrum of geek here. It. Is. Awesome.

7. You will clap at the end of every single lecture

My year did anyway. We’re that cool. Plus we refer to lecturers by their surnames, which makes the way my friends at other universities call their lecturers by their first names peculiarly jarring.

8. Three words: Science Museum Library

Excuse me a minute while I stroke the long-since out-of-print biography of Arthur Eddington I found within its hallowed shelves.

9. Not everyone is a genius and you don’t need to feel insecure if you’re not the best (and that includes you, yes you, little fresher)

Before coming here I read a story about a girl who got 10 As and was rejected from Oxford, (I say and, not but, because 10 A-Levels doesn’t automatically mean Oxbridge material) who was due to be in my year. This made me feel bad.  I also felt bad when I realised that I’m not Peter Hatfield, Sarah Flannery or any of the other thousands of young scientists who are objectively better than me. Now I’m trying to get over this sort of thing, and you should too.

Remember that most people here will have been the top students at their school and when all the top people are put together the top of the top is even… toppier. There will always be someone better than you, but don’t let that get you down. Not everyone can be the best – and not everyone should try and be the best. You’re probably better than you think you are. Yes, even you. Start believing it. It will save you the trouble of a mental breakdown later on.

10. You will get over not getting into Oxbridge

Someone once told me there are three types of students here: the ones who didn’t get into Oxford, the ones who didn’t get into Cambridge and the others who actually had Imperial as a first choice. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to go to Oxford. I started thinking about it when I was still doing GCSEs. When I went for interview and completely blew it I just kind of accepted that the dream world I’d created was exactly that. The fuss some people created over my rejection irritated me when I knew I wasn’t good enough and no one would believe me.

For a long time I still pined for the cities of dreaming spires, cursing myself for not applying instead for maths at Oxford or not applying to natural sciences at Cambridge, planning to reapply after being erroneously told I’d been rejected from Imperial, but coming to Imperial changed all that. Seriously. You get a degree of equal (and perhaps even more) value, plus you have more time for extra-curriculars, and you’re living cheaply in London! Even more importantly, there is a Ben’s Cookies in South Kensington Station, which was the foremost factor in my decision to apply to Oxford (where the original Ben’s Cookies is).

[I have removed number 11, about how it's not as expensive as I thought to live here, because of a comment I received on this post. Accommodation and travel will be more expensive than elsewhere, unless you are lucky, which I personally have been. Still, don't let that discourage you. Amongst other things, Imperial graduates have some of the highest starting salaries, and if you come here you'll probably get the only chance you'll ever  have to live in South Kensington!]

12. If things get rough, don’t carry on until you burn out

This is probably most important of all. The college has all sorts of avenues for getting help if you’re finding life a bit hard – from personal tutors to other people in your department to college counsellors to GPs at the Health Centre who may refer you to a specialist clinic if need be. You cannot, I repeat cannot, suffer in silence. Repeat that to yourself. Put a note on your fridge. Write it backwards on your forehead. Aside from potentially making things much worse, if you don’t let your department know you’re having a tough time and your work suffers for it you won’t be able to claim mitigating circumstances later. You can go into as few or as many specifics as you wish with people (it will be held in complete confidence), though you do have at least say what the problem is and provide some form of evidence on the form you have to fill in to get mitigating circumstances.

It’s not a sign of weakness to ask for help – in many ways it’s quite a brave thing to do. Even if it weren’t you should still do it. I know I was embarrassed at first, but this sort of thing is so common, and even if it weren’t then it would be nothing to be embarrassed about. Find someone who will convince you to go and get help if you can’t make yourself do it. This is seriously important. I know I required a lot of convincing, sometimes even just to leave the house. Don’t let a problem get worse before you get help. Don’t fear wasting people’s time, you won’t be. Most of all, look after yourself.

—

I will add to this as I think up more things, so please check back! If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to send me a message via Facebook (link in the sidebar) or comment on this post. Also coming soon is a “Why choose physics, and why choose Imperial physics” post.

Now, back to revision!

Hmm, yet another long interval between blog posts winding their way out of my brain. I seem to have ridiculous problems with procrastination these days – the other day I had to set a timer to force myself to reply to a few e-mails! Anyway, this is what I’ve been doing since my last entry:

• Attended ESOF 2010 in Turin – from which I learned that Nobel Prize winners aren’t necessarily pleasant people, how not to give a scientific talk, and no Italian whatsoever (sorry, Italy, I tried)
• Went to CERN for a week and had the best time – in September I’m going to apply for next year’s Summer Student Program, I enjoyed it that much!
• Got my results – I was happy with the 93% I got for the summer project, and most of everything else was sort of okay ish, but I have a couple of resits to do in the subjects I had to teach myself/the exams in which I fell completely apart (and even now feel anxious about them!)
• Started a Facebook group for the department newspaper-blog-thing (newsblog, perhaps, if that’s not too Orwellian) that will be worked on more after September the 8th
• Various writey and editey things (or, more accurately, putting off said writey editey things until next month)

I just got an e-mail saying I’ve been awarded the Gloucester Research Prize (and £100) by the physics department. Nice! I didn’t even know there was such a thing… not that I’m complaining Apparently it’s for academic excellence, though the last thing I’d call my results is excellent – I don’t really want to write to them and ask what on earth they were thinking though. Hrm.

Unfortunately a great deal of my days are spent doing nothing. If only I were as interesting as the other bloggers! I wish I could get motivated, but as I mentioned earlier it’s a struggle to even reply to e-mails. I promise to write the Freshers blog posts soon though (and I do mean Freshers 2010, not 2042) – I haven’t had anyone demanding them, but I would hate to disappoint the two of you everyone who reads this!

I shall leave you now with the best piece of advice I got while I was at CERN: Do particle astrophysics – you get everything for nothing!

I thought that I should tell you more about the Freshers Guide I am planning (sorry, everyone else, for spamming your facebook page or feed reader).

I will write three entries, covering three broad areas: Academic, Social and Financial. Obviously it won’t be an exhaustive guide, but I will do my best to pass on what little wisdom I have to aid you in your freshers experience. I will try my best to write and upload the first within the next couple of weeks. Also, I’ll write something more specific on studying Physics at Imperial. I was considering vlogging, but I don’t think anyone needs to see that…

Anyway, if you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to comment!

*dusts off blog*

Hello! Yes, I am still alive. I have now finished my exams and just have to write the rest of the lab report for my summer project – more on that after I demonstrate my feelings towards the exams via the medium of emoticons (because if I write any more I may get the urge to curl up in a box for a while).

Maths

Mechanics and Relativity

Problem Solving

Vibrations and Waves, Structure of Matter and Quantum Physics

Electricity and Magnetism

Maths Analysis

Next year, interpretive dance.

Now, moving on to the summer project! All first year physicists (except the Physics with Musical Performance lot) do a project in the summer term and present it at the Physics Open Days. My partner Isabella (with whom I also watched Lord of the Rings and Star Wars – my nerd card now stands less of a chance of being revoked) and I did a project entitled “Chaos and Stability in the Solar System” – we used computer languages C and C++ to simulate the motion of an asteroid and look for chaos. Computing projects are less popular, both as choices and on the open days, so we were able to do a large chunk of our lab reports during the open days. I didn’t get a chance to see the experimental projects upstairs, but heard they were very exciting! Though not as exciting as creating the solar system in your computer of course

This Tuesday is a Global Day of Solidarity for Troy Davis, who has been on death row in Georgia, USA, for 18 years. On the 23rd he will be having an evidentiary hearing and here at Imperial we will be helping to create a photo petition in his support, so please come along to the JCR between 12 and 2 to “lend your face for justice”! There’s a vigil going on from 5pm to 7pm outside the American Embassy too, so go along to that too if you have the time to spare!

This coming week, in addition to Tuesday’s events, I will be staying in London – I could have gone home, but why would you want to if you could have a free week here?  I will be going to a couple of concerts (Scissor Sisters and They Might Be Giants – thank you, I know my taste in music is terrible), and if anyone has any other ideas about cool things to do let me know.

I will be out of the country for half of July (at the EuroScience Open Forum in Turin, then at CERN for a week because of my EUCYS prize), but this summer I will definitely be writing “The Imperial Fresher’s Guide to the Galaxy”. If there’s anything you would like me to cover (I’ll do things like academics, social, financial, etc.), let me know! Having seen the 2011 prospectus, perhaps I should have done it sooner, but hopefully you will all still find it useful.

Finally, if you’re currently (or going to be) an Imperial physicist and you’re interested in writing or editing, please join the group I have created for Schrödinger’s Cat, the department newspaper I hope to start, and contribute ideas or sign up for things.  I did an interview with Simon Singh a few weeks ago that will hopefully go online and in the first issue.

I can’t think of anything else, and I’ve procrastinated from writing my lab report for too long. See you on the other side!

I sure know how to use the power of the English language to entice readers to my blog (*looks sadly at blog title*). On another note, it’s slightly worrying how often I decide that blogging is a good alternative to sleep.

Not much has changed since my last post, though I do feel better now – mostly because I’ve just finished a three day-long stint of extreme (well, by my current standards anyway) productivity. Unfortunately this hasn’t translated into a decent amount of revision, but hopefully once I’ve got all the dumb things I gotta do out of the way I can set up camp in the library. Which, perversely, I can’t wait for.

I’ve not much to say, really. Perhaps because my brain’s all worn out from actually doing something for a change. Anyway, I would love it if you the readers would let me know what you want me to write about. I keep promising and promising to do stuff, so please feel free to hurl abuse at me for depriving you of my sparkling wit and sage advice. Ahem.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you are going to friend me on Facebook, PLEASE send me a note saying you were referred from the blog. Otherwise I’ll think you’re a randomer and ignore you, as I think I might have done to a few people. My sincerest apologies if you’re still reading and aren’t at this moment burning an effigy of me.

I’m home for the Easter “holidays”, and have been for a week. Having just tried and failed to sleep I thought I’d blog instead, seeing as I’ve been meaning to do it for a while (as always seems to be the case).

All is not well, and it really ought to be. I guess it was kind of stupid to think that the holiday would automatically make me feel better. Oh well. My couple of days’ rest somehow morphed into a week of doing not nearly enough work. I have editing and writing deadlines and e-mails to respond to. My overwhelming urge at the moment is to hide in a box for several months.

Argh.

Good things, now. At the end of term I did as much as I could to catch up on work – and did manage to do a fair amount. I also got invited to a tea party, which was lots of incongruously civilised fun. I met with Professor Ghazwan Butrous, who founded the Young Scientists Journal, and he told me about all sorts of exciting opportunities. I filled out an application form for accommodation next year – somewhere reasonably priced, near the college AND with food included (even though I like cooking, it’ll be one less thing to worry about). I got home in one piece and was greeted by my family, plus tickets for a They Might Be Giants concert in June.

On Tuesday I spoke at the opening of the first Lab 13 in Lincolnshire, at the Peele Community College near Spalding. It was a great honour to be asked, and I wish I could be the management team’s age again so I could take part! I’m truly awful at public speaking, but everyone was very polite and it was a very enjoyable outing, even though an experiment set off the fire alarm and we had to traipse outside.

Also on Tuesday I had my school reunion. I saw lots of old friends and teachers, which was lovely, and won prizes for further maths, highest academic achievement, outstanding academic achievement and contribution to the school – earlier today I went and got poetry books with the vouchers they handed out with the prizes! (Yes, physicists can also like poetry.) I’ve also, so Mrs B tells me, got to write 500 words about the evening for Farrago and teach her how to do the pictures correctly.

I am most certainly not doing Script Frenzy this year. I value what little sanity, and what colossal workload, I’ve got left. I will try to write a few feature articles on here though. If anyone has any particular ideas about something they want me to write about, please comment! Please comment anyway! It makes me feel loved.

Edit: I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION. I’m hoping to restart the physics department newspaper that Simon Singh started and mentioned in the latest Broadsheet. Not until next year though, so no imminent threat to my, ahem, productivity.

This isn’t really Imperial related, but today is Ada Lovelace Day – according to http://findingada.com/ it is “an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science”. So, I thought, why not join in too?

Of course, we shouldn’t celebrate women scientists for their gender – we should celebrate their work. Though this doesn’t make choosing someone to talk about any easier. I thought about it for a while – reading about Lisa Randall’s work got me into physics; I recently re-read “The Dark Lady of DNA” having discovered a blue plaque round the corner from here proclaiming Rosalind Franklin once lived there; heck, there are plenty of inspirational women in science here at Imperial (as the recent We Are Science exhibition demonstrated) – and eventually decided to talk about Lise Meitner.

I consider Lise Meitner inspirational not just because of her work – and that alone was worthy of great acclaim. In addition to discovering several isotopes and the Auger effect (independently of Auger), she was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission. She is often singled out as being unfairly overlooked by the Nobel Committee. Of course, her work had huge implications for nuclear warfare, but she refused to work on the Manhattan Project. As an Austrian Jew she also had to flee Nazi Germany, eventually settling in Sweden. Her epitaph reads: “a physicist who never lost her humanity”.

One day I decided to write a poem for every element of the periodic table – meitnerium was the only one I actually did. No, you can’t read it.

On a completely unrelated note, I will be Chair/President of Amnesty next year! Hopefully I help can continue the great work that everyone’s done this year and do some new exciting things too. I’m planning on writing some “feature” type posts on here soon, so watch out for them!

Well, I’ve had a fairly eventful few days!

ICSF AGM OMGWTFBBQ
Thursday was the Sci Fi Society’s Annual General Meeting, where new committee members are elected, the year is reviewed and the constitution discussed. I stood for the position of Fanzine Editor and was surprisingly elected! It was just a relief really not to be beaten by Miranda the Dalek, who stood for every election (as RON – Re-Open Nominations).

Felix
I wrote an article about the Amnesty society’s involvement in Fair Trade Fortnight and it got into Felix! You can see it in last week’s edition, in the Clubs and Societies section.

Astronauts
On Friday I was lucky enough to attend an event where the speakers were Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan.

Yeah. That Neil Armstrong. That Jim Lovell. That Gene Cernan.

When I say lucky I mean lucky – first I gave my ticket to a friend so she could go instead, then when I was taking her there I headed towards the wrong place on the tube, then got off at the right stop by sheer fluke, then got directed to Burlington House (where the Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Astronomical Society and a few others are) instead of the Royal Society by two people, then got the right directions off a nice man with an iPhone, then thought I had got us lost and got upset, then happened upon the right place, then managed to get a seat outside, watching the live feed!

I took notes, and I will probably write something lengthier if people want to read it. I think the experience summed up best in my friend’s insistence that it couldn’t have been real. I wish I could have stayed longer to mingle, but it was so crowded you could barely move, so we bid a hasty escape to freedom and Nandos.

Saturday
My friend stayed the night and on Saturday we went round the Science Museum – I think my favourite section (besides the gift shop) is Exploring Space, and all the history of medicine bits (despite them making me feel a bit woozy). Cosmos and Culture was disappointing though. In the evening I managed to cook for her (and she is still alive!)

Ready Steady Cook
My hall, Fisher, ran a Ready Steady Cook competition – we were given twelve ingredients, plus a mystery ingredient, and could make whatever we liked! My team made the following:

• Starter: Butternut squash soup with honey roasted pumpkin seeds
• Main: Spaghetti Carbonara
• Dessert: Chocolate surprise! (dubious chocolate cake that ended up turning rock solid, plus melted white chocolate and a random raspberry on the top)

We won Most Original! Last night we used part of our prize to make cocktails, which eventually degenerated into smoothies (which is what usually happens if you put me, fruit and a hand blender together).

Catching up
If I had one word of advice for prospective freshers it would be this: don’t miss a lecture unless absolutely necessary. (That and don’t buy fabric softener instead of detergent like I did. But more the lecture thing.) However, in the past couple of days I’ve managed to get through half of my E&M course, so hopefully by the end of this term I’ll have caught up on all my work!

The second Big Bang Fair was last week too – I was hoping to go as a judge, but couldn’t, and anyway had a good reason not to go just for fun (besides the cost of train tickets: see above). It made me feel all nostalgic about my science fair attending days!

And now to bed.