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.

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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!

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.

I have somewhat of a confession to make – I’ve been ill with depression for a few months now, and it’s made doing stuff that used to be simple a bit more difficult. I mean, it’s not like it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone, obviously, but lots of times I’ve missed out on doing things I’ve really wanted to, such as volunteering and blogging (and college work most of all), because I couldn’t leave the house, which is a bit annoying. I didn’t go to Picocon (Imperial Sci Fi Society’s annual mini-convention) on Saturday because… well, there really wasn’t a good reason for it. I was even in college briefly and went home instead of staying for the remainder of the day. Anyway, perhaps this can serve as an excuse of sorts for my lack of blogging. Also, just in case anyone was worrying, I have medication and have been talking to lots of helpful people, so hopefully the situation will continue improving, albeit slowly!

In fact, the only thing I’ve really been able to keep up with is University Challenge practices (which makes me feel incredibly selfish, but oh well), and today we went for filming. I can’t tell you how we did, because Jeremy Paxman will hunt me down and follow me around saying “Come on!” ad infinitum if I do, but I did enjoy myself a lot. Even if I did only get four hours sleep, then drink too much tea and twitch the whole day.

I think I might have picked up a virus from a team-mate though. I’m writing this because I can’t get to sleep and I’ve been meaning to write it for a while. Hopefully it won’t be as long until the next post! (Especially since I’ve been planning to write something on the Science Challenge and the deadline for it is a week away…)

We got through to the television rounds of University Challenge!

THIS CAN ONLY GO WELL.

Hello. It’s been a while since I blogged last – I thought it might be a good idea to now, since I’m going away for the weekend and I’ve been meaning to for a while!

First of all, I’m no longer a Physics with a Year in Europe student – I’ve transferred to the Physics with Theoretical Physics course because it sounds cool to say that you study theoretical physics because the German component of the degree was too much and I didn’t think there was much point continuing when I definitely wasn’t going to be able to go abroad in the end. Since we haven’t started options yet it was quite easy to change – instead of my language counting for half a unit this year (each year is worth four units) a course in Mathematical Analysis will. I am far too excited about this course; I found the Mathematics Library especially so I could get out a book from the reading list I discovered for it! Apparently, it’s maths we won’t use in our regular physics work, so it should be a really interesting change of scene. Also, it means that I’ve changed from theoretical to YiE and back again – hooray for being difficult!

Anyway, first year physicists had a careers talk on last Tuesday. I was incredibly surprised when the lady asked for a show of hands of people who (a) were certain what they wanted to do, (b) had some ideas but weren’t certain, and (c) had no clue, and the majority of people didn’t fall into the first or second categories. I suppose I didn’t think about the idea that physics might be the sort of thing people choose to do if they’re not sure – and, of course, the fact that people don’t usually make decisions like that before even getting to university! When I came here I thought I was an (a) type of person, but as I do new things I’m realising that it would be very hard for me to choose a narrow sort of career path – as much as research interests me, I don’t really want to become highly specialised in just one field. There’s always science journalism, but I don’t know if I’d be able to communicate ideas that effectively. I didn’t think I’d be the sort of person who would end up not knowing what they would do in the future! I guess I should make my way over to the careers service at some point, if only to check my CV is okay…

Also, on Monday we went to the London Television Studios for our University Challenge interview! It consisted of a recorded quiz with 40 questions 8 seconds apart (I managed to answer 30-odd, hopefully correctly!) and an informal chat about our subjects and how our team came together. We’ll find out if we’re through next Friday – it’s nothing like a certainty (they don’t just select on ability – there’s also geography and other things to take into account), but I think we’ve got a fair chance of getting through. Even if we don’t it’s been a lot of fun so far!

Anyway, I should go now and finish getting my stuff ready for this weekend. I will get my act together and actually write all the things I’ve been meaning to soon, I swear!