Exciting things to come!

I haven't written a blog post in almost a month which is very unlike me, so I thought I would update you on what is happening in my bubble.

I've got some really exciting events coming up, thanks to Fran at Social Sheffield. - We're going to TedX Sheffield where there are going to be some amazing speakers (I've already been researching and googling them), then the week after I'm attending an event here in Sheffield called 'Celebrating Modern Feminism' hosted by Laura Bates, who is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project. Fingers crossed that because we have press passes, we may get to do a quick interview with her. (It's a feminists dream!).

Also coming up is the Stemettes Hackathon this weekend, which I am volunteering at. I got a press pass for the event, but the Stemettes kindly Dm'ed me on Twitter and asked me if I want to volunteer as well, which is lovely of them. I'm excited to throw myself into the world of code, it'll be fun to learn something new!

Uni wise, revision has begun.

I REPEAT. REVISION HAS BEGUN. 

It's that time already. I feel as if I've been back for five minutes but it's only 2 months until exams and this year I'm determined to ace them. I can do it! :-)

New Adventures

I have exciting news. From now on I will still try to blog regularly, however I have new ventures that I am about to embark upon.

I recently met the Creative Director of an organisation called Social Sheffield. After being spotted on twitter, I was asked to meet up with them to discuss how they could support my aims and passions. Social Sheffield have their own site, where they advertise events and activities going on in the Sheffield area. They also support restaurants, bars etc and have Food, Culture and Music twitter accounts covering all kinds of entertainment and events. Recently, they have been wanting to set up an Education section, where educational activities can be posted in the hope that the people of Sheffield will be more drawn in to going to these kind of events. Anyway, I met up with Social Sheffield and I will now be tweeting from their Education account as well as my own personal account. They have offered to let me be their Education Editor and hopefully in due course I will be able to write articles for their online magazine which is currently under maintenance. 

It's all very exciting and has happened so quickly. I can only hope that I'm good at it and who knows where this could lead? :-)

My Social Sheffield Twitter

The Social Sheffield Twitter

Useful Books for Undergraduate Chemistry Students

I love books, like really love books. If you're starting University and studying the physical sciences, I've devised a list of books that may be useful in your first year of University. Every Uni has their own list of recommended reading but obviously not all lists will contain the same books, so I've taken some books that my department recommended and some I discovered myself, that have been really helpful/interesting, so I hope this is of some use if you want to get some books together before starting your course. :-)

• This book is awesome. It may say that it's for A level Chemistry, but it's full of exercises and calculations that cover all aspects of Chemistry. It's really good for revising your maths skills and working through problems. It also has example problems at the beginning of each chapter so you know how to calculate the answers yourself and it's just really useful if you want to revise answering calculation questions. You can buy it here: Calculations for A-level Chemistry

• Another Maths book specifically for those undergraduate students studying the chemical sciences without having done A level maths. Again, example problems are given and it covers everything you will cover in your first year maths catch-up lectures. Covers lots of different topics such as differentiation, integration and matrices. You can buy it here: Maths for Chemistry

• Oxford Chemistry Primers are really helpful. They are small books each focussing on a specific topic in Chemistry and will contain some information that may not be given to you in lectures. They're really good for outside reading, are concise and informative and on the whole, easy to understand. I didn't buy before starting my first year and I really wish I had because generally, the University library will only have a few copies of each and they are really good! I've recently invested in a few to begin my second year and plan on taking them on holiday with me to begin some pre-Uni reading. Just search for Oxford Chemistry Primers on Amazon and there are tonnes of them. Some are more expensive than others and I'm unsure why, but I think I got mine for about a penny each. You can't go wrong. 
  

• Who says all educational books have to be text books? If you're studying a subject like chemistry, one topic you will cover in your first year will be the structure of atoms and quantum mechanics. It's difficult to get your head around at first because it's like nothing you've ever encountered before and it always reminds me of the famous quote: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." This is where Brian Greene comes in. 'The Fabric of the Cosmos' is a brilliant book. It really helped me understand quantum mechanics, probability and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. It's also really good if you're interested in concepts such as time and space etc. Amazon have it here: Fabric of the Cosmos 

There are so many useful books out there to aid you in your university course and don't be afraid to try those that aren't textbooks; sometimes they're more helpful as they have a more personal approach and examples you can relate to. :-)

The downfalls of being indecisive

I am a very indecisive person, I always have been. So much so, that my family shout at me because I take so long to choose food in a restaurant. This indecisiveness is not helping the fact that I need to start looking at companies to do my third year placement at.

My course is 'MChem Chemistry with a year in Industry', so in third year I spend my time at a chemical company and I work for them for an entire year. The first issue to tackle was the sector of chemistry I wanted to go into. I enjoy inorganic and organic chemistry the most but my grades in inorganic have been higher, so I decided I wanted to go into inorganic to explore a little more about the things that have interested me, such as transition metal complexes and colour chemistry. I like the fact you're guaranteed to have pretty coloured products in inorganic, as childish as that sounds and I also really love inorganic labs at Uni.

My exam results really haven't been the greatest and I know I could have done better, however I've had a pretty tough year with being diagnosed with depression and bereavements etc. so I was quite happy to finish first year with a 2:1. This is pretty much the minimum to be able to get an industry placement so I'm quite nervous that I'm not going to be good enough. All I can do is smash it next year.

Recently, I've been looking into companies to apply to and at this moment in time, just thinking about it makes me anxious and nauseous. On one hand I can't imagine living on my own for a year away from everyone else at Uni, but at the same time I am secretly excited (just a minute bit though). I want to go somewhere I'll really love; after all, I will be working 9am-5pm, five days a week. The worst part is having to have an idea of where I want to work by September as I need to start applying, but at the moment, I'm totally not ready for this.

Science and the education system.

For a while now, people have been talking about why there aren't many girls taking the sciences at A-level, especially physics. I sometimes think that I regret not taking physics at A-level as it's a subject I really enjoy now and it would have helped me hugely during my first year of University. However, the more I think about it, I realise that I didn't choose physics because physics A-level looks extremely boring. I'm not saying that physics is boring; I find it fascinating, especially learning about the origin of the planets and why we're here but at the time of choosing my A-levels, I couldn't think of a more mind-numbing course. I think this opinion can be extended to the majority of the sciences at A-level, as to pass the exams you don't even need to understand key concepts, simply memorise them, throw in some key words and BAM, you've got full marks. Well done you.

Chemistry is obviously my favourite subject, but even I didn't find the syllabus or the way of "learning" during A-level chemistry inspiring at all. Instead of focusing on why certain complexes produce gelatinous precipitates and the chemistry behind this, you simply had to remember to write down the word 'gelatinous' in the exam and you would be fine. I knew this wasn't learning. Okay, there's always going to be key concepts and words that you need to remember because they're important, but the idea behind science qualifications like this isn't understanding, it's memorisation and that's not what science is about. How are young people and especially girls supposed to pick these A-levels when there are no real-life applications behind them? Simply saying 'This is this, accept it. Oh and remember to write this word in your answer.' is not representative of the problem-solving and creative thinking that many scientists use on a day to day basis. This is why I didn't choose physics at A-level. I really didn't enjoy it as a subject at school because I couldn't relate to it. The only part of physics I enjoyed at school was learning about nuclear fission and radioactive decay as we were given actual examples of this. I think when it comes to science, the way you learn is by hands-on experience, not sitting and memorising. Thankfully, I had a brilliant teacher who actually studied chemistry at Uni (a rarity these days) and hence was really enthusiastic about the subject and always throwing in anecdotes and random facts related to what we were learning. I don't hesitate to say that if it wasn't for him, my love for chemistry probably wouldn't have developed as much as it did.

The way A-levels are taught kind of sets you up for failure when you reach University. All of a sudden you have vast amounts of information thrown at you and you quickly realise that memorising it all will be impossible and that's where I suddenly realised that I didn't know how to learn. Thankfully, there are a lot more practical sessions at Uni and these are what most helped me learn the concepts we were introduced to in lectures. My scores in my lab sessions have been consistently high throughout both semesters, simply because I enjoy them and I get to 'do stuff' whether it be carrying out a recrystallisation or playing around with chlorine gas (I use the word 'playing' loosely. Please don't play with chlorine gas.). All in all, the way A-levels and even GCSEs are taught makes science seem like very boring fields, when actually they are amazing and I can't imagine doing anything other than a science degree.

Surviving the first year of Uni

Okay, so I said the blog would mainly be about science, and I suppose I can throw some in by linking it to the course I do, but primarily, this is a different type of post. I wanted to write about surviving your first year of uni, seeing as it's possibly one of the most daunting times of your life. I'll focus on the academic side of things because I know there's lots of advice out there about social life, cooking, meeting new people etc. but personally, I wish I had known more about the learning style before I moved away to Sheffield last September.

As someone who achieved high grades and found school relatively easy, I was shocked when I found that getting 70% is not as simple as I thought it was. Sure, 70% is a first and is considered the highest 'grade' and at GCSE and even A-level, a bit of revision will get you that seventy. Um, not at University. Not meaning to say it's impossible or insult anyone's intelligence, but be prepared to work your arse off if you want a first. I made more notes for my 4 exams this summer than I did for the whole of A level.

If you're lucky enough, you'll get your textbooks for free (like I did ;) ), if not, you'll have to buy them. They're expensive but you'll need them. Also, remember to use them - for the first couple of months of uni I continued googling questions on lattice structures, forgetting that I had three huge textbooks on the shelf above my head containing all the information I needed. How very ditsy of me.

I think the most valuable thing I've learnt since being at Uni is organisation, and I mean being properly organised! Departments will send out emails for events/meetings months before they occur, and in the run up to them they won't remind you; you're expected to be organised and know exactly where you should be and when. I've made this mistake a few times because I hadn't written things down. So yeah, a diary's useful for organising your life. Also, if you have certain assignments to do every week like I do, then plan which days you're going to do them on and try and stick to them. For example, every week I have tutorial questions, a pre-lab assignment, a lab report and anything else I've got to do. In the first semester of uni, I was concentrating on settling in and wasn't really as organised as I should've been, so many a time I was still doing my lab report at 11 o'clock on Sunday night when it was in for Monday morning. I hate the feeling of being rushed and panicking about not having time, so I decided to plan out my week. I would do my report on Monday and Tuesday nights so it was out of the way, Wednesdays were reserved for tutorial questions and Thursdays for my pre-lab assignment. I really can't exaggerate the point of being organised enough. There's lots more commitments at uni than sixth form/college and you have to look after yourself and cook etc. meaning it's so easy to procrastinate. Let's face it though, procrastination is fun.

Probably the most important piece of advice is try to go to lectures. I can't say I went to every one, it's so tempting to miss them when you know that no one will notice if you're not there. Also when my depression got bad at Christmas and around Easter, I missed a hell of a lot of lectures because I simply couldn't drag myself out of bed and kind of gave up. I found catching up quite difficult, especially when you then return to lectures and you have no idea what your lecturer is talking about. Of course a lot of lectures are put online so you can go home and watch them again, but my Quantum Mechanics lecturer made the point of not putting anything online so you had to go to his lectures, otherwise you were screwed basically. Funny guy.

This post may make me sound like a complete geek who sat in my room for the whole year doing work, but please remember I did all these things so I could relax and have fun. I got all my work out of the way as soon as possible so I could go out without nothing to worry about and not have to write a lab report with a hangover (it's not pleasant thinking about gravimetric determination of nickel whilst your head's down the toilet, trust me).

I hope this is of some use and good luck :)