Dawn's blog

To everyone who got their grades yesterday, congratulations! I hope you’re all really excited about starting at Imperial in just less than 6 weeks time. If you look through some of the student bloggers posts, there’s some great advice and handy tips for starting university.

There’s also loads of freshers groups on facebook, for different departments/clubs/halls. Take a look at them! And if you have any other questions, feel free to ask on here as well!

Dawn

One of the best things about my degree is definitely going on fieldwork! Here’s a photoblog of the second year ESE students trip to Sardinia. We spent 10 days on the island, visiting different areas around the whole island … seeing everything from tetrapod poo fossils to volcanic sediments!

Sorry about the lack of blogging over the last 6 weeks, it kind of slips my mind completely when I’m at home!

I’ve spent Easter revising and finishing my humanity coursework, interspersed with meeting up from friends from home if/when our uni holidays collide. Especially now everyone seems to be living out, and now that second year properly ‘counts’, it means that people only tend to be home for a few weeks at a time.

Now I’ve just got 1 week of revision left, then 1 week of exams, then 2 weeks in Sardinia on fieldwork!

The good thing about having our summer exams so early is that it gets them out of the way nice and early, the bad thing is that all my housemates still have exams later on in the term and won’t be fun for ages…

Good luck to anyone doing A-levels, hope you get the grades you want

The title says it all really. I’ve spend the last few months trying to be organised and set myself up a work experience/internship/placement during the summer. The most frustrating experience of my life!

I’m not kidding, I’ve filled out 4 hours of online testing for a company, only to immediately be sent an email telling me I was automatically being screened out of the application process for not being in my final year - which I had told them before I filled out their stupid tests. So many companies don’t even reply to emails asking what their policy is on work experience; whereas others who do have defined schemes on their websites don’t seem to know anything about it when you ring them up.

So far I must have spent a fortune on stamps filling in and sending in applications which require “A passport style photo attached with a non-metal paperclip”, applications that need filling out on a computer before being posted as paper copies, and hours filling in repetitive forms online. And I really, really wish there weren’t so many of those stupid “Tell me about a time when you were in a management position whilst working in a team on a project…” type questions. Seriously, I swear they are a waste of time, not to mention pretty obscure…

Thing is, I don’t just want a placement so I can stick it on my CV to apply for a job – its because I don’t know what job I want to do ! Plus it would make more sense to try and work that out now so I can start choosing my modules with an aim in sight – not to mention the cost of my degree and any masters degree I might potentially do afterwards!

So far, its not looking so good for getting a placement, I’ve just got a few left to hear back from. So if anyone will take a 2nd year undergraduate Environmental Geoscience for any work experience, unpaid or not, to do with anything in the Environmental Management/Resource Management/Environmental Consulting industry, let me know!