Imperial College At Night

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As a postgraduate student, I approached London and Imperial College with a sense of readiness, relaxation and expectation that definitely wasn’t there in my first round of university. This feeling tided me through my laconic packing and travelling, all up until the point that I woke up on a coach entering London and realised that I’d bought a one-way ticket for a reason. Quite simply, because now I wasn’t leaving- and dear goodness I was a student. Again!

At the beginning of the week, Imperial’s campus looked far more frightening than it looked when I came here for my interview. I believe it really sunk in that I was part of Imperial on the first Monday afternoon, before classes had started. I had eventually caved and taken a nice room in Wandsworth just the weekend before. I did my usual ‘walk around the corner and promptly get lost’ initiation rite which I do whenever I move to a new area. I think I largely spent my second day in Oxford searching for the entrance to Pembroke College, and my first backpacking day in Bangkok stubbornly walking around interestingly similar roads, looking for my lost guesthouse. I should staple a compass to my clothes or leave a trail of breadcrumbs, or something. Departmental induction activities were scheduled for the next day, and all I had to do on Monday was show up for a general welcome seminar to graduate students. So, I approached Imperial from Exhibition Road and entered through the tall, impressive front-door bit, with its clear glass walls and rising pillars. I went through into the quad, which was full of young, smart, cheerful looking people who were about to start their undergraduate degrees. Then, it sunk in.

‘My goodness, I’m part of a university again’

-and, blasting away my nonchalance-

‘Is there something I’m meant to be doing? Am I meant to be somewhere? Have I missed an important welcome-to-the-university-now-don’t-slip-up meeting already?’

The number of people crisscrossing the impressive space finally made this overconfident graduate student feel insecure. Being in my early twenties, I doubted I looked much different to the undergraduate freshers- maybe a few lines about the eyes, a weary and familiar fatalism in my eyes when it’s time for the 16 hour day study periods, and yet, I was yearning to be able to spot the *other* graduate students more easily. Would the youthful undergrad freshers lose interest if I revealed that I was a little older and only here for a year, if I’d already done one degree and had come back for more of the same?

Fresher’s week slipped by in the blur of milling crowds and evening bar events. I handed over my tuition fee cheque, refusing to think about the process until my fingers had stickily departed from the paper. Strangely, afterwards, I felt pretty light and carefree. Having officially validated my presence here and become comparatively poor again, I was free to be fully student-ey and walk into the Msc in Science Media Production’s mill.

During the rest of the week, I was immensely reassured by the like-minded and friendly people on my course, and happy to be part of them. It was extremely easy to chat to just about anyone, even if we did ask each other predictable questions like ‘So what did you do before?’ ‘Where was that?’ and ‘Why did you choose to do this course?’ I was happy to see that many people seemed to have similar feelings to me- liking science but not wanting to do research, or nurturing artistic hobbies. Later that week, I combed through Fresher’s Fair and there also proved to be a vast array of university societies to sign up to and abandon. I was charmed by the fact I didn’t have to pay through the nose to join the Union, or the university gym, or to get a pint of beer. Except for the usual generic drinking evenings which were aimed at undergraduates living on campus, Fresher’s week was fine.

Not buying a London A-Z turned out to be a dreadfully bad idea as more time just got added to the large amount already spent wandering similar looking streets and wondering how the heck to get home. I yearned for the day when I might finally be the one giving directions to tourists… when I no longer read the local street names like foreign languages… when I could walk in central London without peering myopically at my tight clutched free map. There was so much to explore that I hardly knew where to begin.

Every day I stoically cycled to Imperial, a good 40 minutes depending on temperamental traffic lights, looming great ghostlike buses, or foolishly improvised detours. In contrast to the old lecture heavy mornings of being a science undergrad, I found I had only three compulsory classes a week of 2-3 hours duration. This, I realised, in what was the culmination of years of thoughtful late night wonderings as a science student, and traffic-dodging mental grousing in the morning, is what it meant to be a Humanities Student. It meant directing most of my own study, and getting involved with almost as many extracurricular societies as I liked without being constantly run down by lectures, essays and practicals. It also meant I’d have to find many more exciting things to do in the evenings. Fortunately, even with a couple of years out of further education, I’d still got it. There was no stopping me. In the hours between exploring Imperial and fiddling with the multitude of bits of paper from Fresher’s Fair, I went into the library, and tentatively started my reading…’

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