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

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

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!

Its amazing, and so versatile. My housemates reckon I’m slightly addicted to it…not sure why. Apparently they aren’t usual foods to stir into porridge in the morning…

But my most recently discovered combination version… peanut butter and nutella ice cream cocktails!

I promise, these are absolutely amazing! Just stick in a jug blender

-Couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream

-Good dollop of peanut butter and nutella

-Splash of Baileys and Kahlua

…amazing! You can also make it without the peanut butter and/or chocolate to have slightly more universal appeal…

So this year our title is “Earth Science and Humanity”. I was just browsing around on wikipedia late one night, a week before I had to hand in my project outline wondering/panicking about which topic to choose.

Then I found out some facts about litter in the ocean which completely made my mind up for me about my project title. I completely had no idea about these stastics or even what order of magnitude they would be. So here’s a short quiz… see what you reckon the answers would be! Then I’ve put in some pictures to stop you looking at the answers, which are at the bottom of this post!

1 – When litter and stuff ends up in the ocean, it tends to either break down/sink/get eaten, with the pretty major exception of plastic. The way the world’s ocean currents work mean that all this litter ends up building up as a ‘garbage patch’ in the middle of the ocean. Its a natural process, plankton ends up in big patches as well.

So guess roughly what area of ocean in the Pacific is part of this plastic garbage patch? (as a clue to scale, you want to make your guess in kilometers squared)

2 – In this Great Pacific Garbage Patch, what would you expect the proportion of plastic to zooplankton to be? The same amount of each? Twice as much zooplankton as plastic? Twice as much plastic as zooplankton?

A picture showing the location of gyres in the worlds oceans – from US NOAA

The kind of ‘plastic confetti’ that most of the garbage patch consists of.

Answer to 1 – Estimates range from 700 000 sq km to 15 million sq km. For comparison the UK is about 250 000 square kilometeres in size.

Answer to 2 – Plastic debris outweighted zooplankton 6 to 1 by weight. (data from Charles Moore’s study published in 1999)

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was first discovered in 1997 by an oceanographer called Charles Moore when he sailed through it (the plastic is suspended just under the surface of the water, so doesn’t show up on satellite imagery). Plus, not only does all this plastic affect wildlife, but due to the complex way it breaks down and the toxic chemicals it contains, it could be a real problem for people in the future. If you want to find out more, wikipedia has some good pages on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or Charles Moore (the oceanographer who first discovered all this plastic has written a book) called Plastic Ocean. Or a good article from The New York Times online http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/10patch.html

~Dawn

The thing I love about uni holidays is that even though you are generally expected to do a bit of work, they’re long enough to fit in other stuff too. This year, I helped out with a local children’s charity which gives respite in the run up to Christmas to disabled kids and their siblings. And it was genuinely really rewarding! The kids had a great time (on the whole) and their parents were so grateful

So then came Christmas, and after that, exam revision. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that so instead here’s a list of the best/weirdest/interesting websites I ended up on as a form of procrastination!

1. http://writtenkitten.net/  - great essay motivation

2. http://www.parttimecarnivore.org/ – stats are a bit iffy but still thought provoking

3. http://camels.evilsun.org/ – and just for sheer randomness!

~Dawn

Firstly, and I know its also probably really unhelpful … but don’t stress out too much! You’ll come accross far better if you weren’t up late the night before cramming stuff. Plus, the kind of stuff you tend to get asked in interviews is either

a) stuff from GCSE sort of level at school that you really should know if you’re seriously applying for your subject

b) the kind of weird obscure stuff that you either know or you don’t…chances of stumbling accross it in a book the night before is close to nil!

However, one thing that it is worth keeping up to date with is current affairs in science – all the little things that have happened in the last 2 weeks, and then all the more major things in the last year or so. (especially anything that relates to topics you mentioned in your personal statement).

Another thing, don’t stress too much about what you wear! I wore smart jeans and a cardigan to my interviews – although there were people there dressed in suits. I went to a fairly casual sixth form though, so I just wouldn’t have felt comfortable in a suit; my advice is just to go wearing something you’d feel comfortable in wearing at school.

A point to bear in mind is also that your interview is partly to see what kind of person you are; not just what you know. So expect to be asked about your hobbies, why you want to come to Imperial or to that course in particular. Imperial seems to quite like ‘well-rounded’ people, as my head teacher used to describe it as – people who manage to do we well in their work, but also find time to enjoy themselves.

Your interview is also a good chance to ask questions. Obviously don’t ask something stupid that you could find out for yourself on Google in a minute, or on the department homepage, but if there is something you were wondering about its a good oppurtunity.

Everyone gets interviewed by a member of acadaemic staff – and one top tip is that researchers love talking to people about their research. So if conversation does start drying up, or there are 5 minutes to fill at the end, its a great bet to ask them about what they research – they’d probably love to tell you!

Bear in mind, even if you think the interview went terribly, you might not necessarily be right! At my Imperial interview I got up and down confused on a graph, nearly died running up 4 flights of stairs in heels after my ultra keen interviewer and then lost his pencil somewhere down the back of his desk – and I still got in!

Afterwards, the best thing to do is just go home and relax. Tell people about it if you want but don’t keep replaying it in your head! You’ll hear soon enough how you’ve done, I don’t think departments normally like to leave you hanging for longer than they have to! I heard from Imperial within about a week of my interview, although I know some people have to wait a little longer.

So good luck to everyone applying!

(and to anyone who gets an interview in Earth Science and Engineering, you might see me as a tour guide/helper on the day! )

And if you have any questions, ask and I’ll do my best to answer them!

-Dawn

If you really want, you can stay on in halls for longer than just for your first year. You can stay on as a hall senior (help all the first years settle in, organise events, help run the hall) or there are some spare rooms each year. If you have a good reason for wanting to stay in halls for  longer (disability or health problem – not just laziness and wanting to roll out of bed 5 minutes before lectures) then there are also rooms available.

But for everyone else… its up to you to find somewhere to live! I know finding a house whilst at Imperial is something people worry about when they apply, so I thought I’d do a blog post about it.

Luckily, being London, there is huge amount of student housing – and I’ve never heard of anyone ending up homeless. You don’t even need to start looking too early. We started looking in June/July although I do know people who didn’t start looking till September! As a ballpark figure, you can find plenty of stuff in the £100 a week price range, although ours is a bit cheaper. So for a lot of people, it works out about the same price as halls. (Halls is a 39 week contract, private housing tends to be a min of 9 or 10 months).

But, back to the title of this post – the new house! We’re living in Hammersmith, near Charing Cross Hospital. Its an awesome place to live, much more studenty than Chelsea (not that I didn’t like it there, but it is useful to have a corner shop that doesn’t predominantly sell Champagne and cigars!). Living here, away from home and the wardening team in halls has been fun, but also brought its own challenges! When something goes wrong, or gets broken, its up to us to sort it out. Between my group of friends, we’ve learnt how to fix a washing machine, how to sort out our awful internet connection, and what its like when your plumbing makes noises like a pneumatic drill and goes off at all times of day and night!

And OK, its not all of us in the same place at the same time, but it is all 6 of us!

So seeing as these people will probably be mentioned in some of my posts over the year, I just thought I’d introduce my housemates.

1 Sally – my old roommate. Good at physics (obviously), and really good at learning languages, music and art too!

2 Theresa – she’s a mathematician (has the least hours of lectures a week out of all of my housemates!) and insanely good at finding free stuff.

3 Fiona – a biologist, likes furry things, be they slippers, cushions, blankets, jummpers…anything really! The house ‘mum’.

4 Kee – another physicist, always seems to be going to musicals!

5 Caitlin – the semi absent housemate. Seriously, she is just such a busy person its a pretty major event when she has a day at home. But her chemistry degree is put to good use, she’s great at baking.

So that’s the house for the year – 1 engineer and 5 scientists! Piccies to follow!

edit -03/11 Still no pic of all 6 of us together! If we aren’t actually all at home at some point over the weekend I’m just gonna have to photoshop us together! But for now, here’s cake