I think university is definitely about building life skills. These aren't life skills like looking both ways while crossing a road, saying no to strange men in cars or washing your hands after going to the toilets. The biggest words are self-motivation, self-discipline and living, working and learning from housemates, course mates and lecturers. It is with these life skills that the best degree can be gained. Balance the party with the play and you have a winning combination. No, an invaluable combination.
Whoah, so they were some deep words. I'm not high. And just so you know, life, skills, and building aren't the thoughts going through my head when I'm at university. Bitch, pleeeease.
Anyway, while the original point of this blog was for me to cheekily impress the UCAS application, my life skills and I realised that the 4 weeks spent at home over easter should definitely include some revision for my summer exams, somewhere, of what I have learnt over my freshers year (first year) in Lancaster.
Why am I revising? What have I been doing for the last 6 months? Since this is in fact a science blog not a banter blog, here's an insight into the life of a undergraduate Biomedical Sciences student at Lancaster University:
In each 10 week semester (or term) of university we have had 6 modules.
Each 10 week semester is divided into 5 week 'half terms', where we study 3 modules.
During the first 4 weeks of a half term we have 3 lectures a week on our chosen modules (lets say 'Molecules of Life' or 'Anatomy and Physiology'). Since we're studying 3 modules with 3 lectures each, that's 9 lectures each week.
Lectures are 50 mins long on average, but can be longer or shorter (the shorter the better, naturally). Each module usually has one lecturer which does the first couple of lectures and then swaps with another lecturer for a later part of the module. There are 12 lectures per module. Some lectures contain 200 students, for example the modules that are more core, and other contain a good class size of 50 people. The first thing you will notice about lectures is that some of them will be really engaging and others you will want to sleep on the desk. This could be partly because you may have gone out the night before (naturally), because the lecturer has spent so many years in a lab they are better at talking to Drosophila than a person or that you have studied the topic for A-level (happens more than you think). Indeed, for any of you who have done OCR Biology for A-level, the 'Molecules of Life' has striking resemblance to the 'Biological Molecules' and 'Plasma Membranes' chapters studied in AS. Easy easy. Lectures aren't exciting as such, but they are engaging if an interesting topic comes along and particularly fulfilling if a lecture asks a question to the entire lecture theatre and only you know the answer. There's also quite a bit of lecture banter when the same guy (always a guy, never a girl, and usually an international student) asks questions every 5 minutes, or if someone has a funny sneeze.
As well as 3 lectures for each module, there are practicals for 2 of my modules per week that can last up to 4 hours (this sounds bad, which it is sometimes, but it depends on how bad the practical/pointless-cutting-up-of-small-leaves is). There have been practicals where mystery pieces of DNA have been given out and using an electrophoresis gel to sort them by size, identifying what DNA had been given to us against a known chart. This had a long waiting time, about 45 minutes, where we were allowed to leave the lab (an oreo milkshake was bought and drunk in this good time, as well as a bit of House watched on my laptop) but was cool to do, since it is such a commonly talked about method in DNA technology and it's uncommonly done in A-level Biology. Plus, and you'll have to trust me on this one, loading the DNA into the 'wells' of the gel looks like the coolest thing ever.
Other practical sessions have included tasks outside the labs also, where case studies have been given to us; a worksheet for example, where a person called...lets say Bob because it's one of the best names...has with low sodium levels. We then diagnose Conn's Syndrome, a condition that was studied in the lectures.
After 4 weeks of a module of lectures and practicals we get a reading week in the 5th week (no lectures = incredible lie ins) so that we can study for the 'end of module test', which is a 40 minute true or false exam paper with 100 questions give or take. This sounds bad but it really isn't that bad if you can decide something is false without a second thought (plants cells have huge penises, true or false?).
Since we have 3 modules per 5 weeks, that means we have 3 end of module tests at the end of each half term. Each end of module test counts for 16% of one module, which along practical lab reports and other courseworks (25%), as well as 3 separate online multiple choice tests online (9%), add up to 50% of the total mark of the year.
The other 50% of the modules come in 3 exams in June. Each exam contains 5 sections, with each section corresponding to one module, like our little friend Molecules of Life module. There are 3 questions in each module to choose from (one must be chosen), and each section should take half an hour, taking the total exam time to 2 hours and 30 minutes. Maaan I am not looking forward to the hand-ache during those exams.
Anyway, that's basically how it all works in Lancaster for Biomedical Sciences. As it stands with all my assessed work, that's end of module tests, online tests and courseworks, I'm set for a First Class in my first year, which is a great feeling. And on top of that, this holiday I'll be rocking out to cornwall with some of the guys I met in the snowsports club, we're going to see DJ Fresh on the first thursday of term at the student union club, and I love life.
Over the next couple of weeks I've decided I'm going to get down all the experience I've had from the modules into some blog posts for the purposes of cementing them into my sciency mind, and sharing them to the world. Observe my self-motivation and self-discipline in the following posts, like a boss*.
*new favourite saying picked up from housemate
