Didn't take maths at A-level?

When it comes to choosing a-levels, it's difficult to know which subjects to pick. There's often a lot of pressure on people to choose maths if they also want to do any of the sciences, as it is the basis of subjects such as physics and chemistry. I was one of the people who did sciences but not maths. For a while I regretted this and I panicked about the 'catch-up' lectures I was going to have at Uni, but my issue was that I really didn't want to spend two years doing an A-level that I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy or not.

In year 11, my friend and I were entered for the additional maths exam, but our teacher had no time to teach us anything from the syllabus (that's just representative of my school) and so we had two weeks to teach ourselves this syllabus with completely new concepts like differentiation/integration and I think that's where my dislike of maths stemmed from. I really didn't appreciate being left to learn something entirely new with symbols I'd never seen before and not being able to ask anyone for help. I got an E on the exam, simply by teaching myself the basics of differentiation and integration and writing out my workings in slightly different formats hoping they would give me more marks. I had no idea how to do the rest of the questions and spent the next hour counting the bricks on the wall. It's fair to say, after that I wasn't too confident when it came to the subject.

Not having maths A-level isn't the be all and end all. Although I think maths is important and you should be fairly competent at it to work in STEM areas, you don't have to be a genius to be successful. Many universities offer catch-up courses for people without the A-level qualification, as I had to do this year. I actually appreciated the quick pace of the lectures and only learning what we needed to know, as well as the chemical background they gave problems and questions.

As I said, I previously regretted my decision, but now I'm okay with it. There's so much pressure on people to understand maths and be good at it, which results in people being terrified of what actually is quite an enjoyable subject for people like me. I used to be so scared of maths and thought you had to be a child prodigy to understand it, but you don't. Maths is simply learning rules and applying them to a given situation. Mix in a little problem-solving and it's soon quite fun.

 My main message I'm trying to get across in this post is, if you want to do A-level maths, do it. If you don't, but you want to go on to do a science subject at Uni, don't worry. Obviously, if you have a degree and career choice in mind, look at which a-levels you're required to have first. I imagine it would be quite disappointing to choose your subjects and then realise you can't do the course you want.

It will all be fine. Trust me (says the girl who still doesn't know her times tables off by heart)...

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.

STEM club event

Last month, I attended my STEM ambassador induction and since then I've been really excited about getting involved in activities. Becoming a STEM ambassador is really easy and so worthwhile, you simply volunteer to give up some of your time to inspire and help run activities for primarily younger people in order to get them more interested in STEM related fields.

One of the activities I particularly wanted to get involved in was STEM clubs. These are clubs run by local schools for their students and usually occur in the evenings. The clubs are supposed to be engaging and educational without simply being an extension of what pupils learn in lessons. They are supposed to be inspiring and fun!

The STEM club information pack

 Being able to help such a club is what I really want to do, so today I and another ambassador walked across town to Sheffield Hallam University and managed to navigate the Owens building and their very complicated lifts (they work on a server that determines which lift you should get to arrive at your destination quickest, it's all very confusing). We arrived at room 941 and were greeted by a group of teachers who wanted to start or have recently started up STEM clubs in their schools and we were each given an information pack.

 The afternoon was really informal and fun; we got to try out lots of activities including seeing who could build the tallest tower out of a single piece of A4 paper and building and launching our own rockets.

The time came for all the ambassadors to briefly explain what our field of expertise was and why we were here. I explained that I want to get more girls into STEM subjects as females are vastly under represented. One female teacher then asked me if I would be interested in visiting her all-girl club. Working with an all female STEM club is really exciting to me as we do need more females in such careers.

WISET

Polymorph, a thermoplastic

The day ended and Andy Bullough (STEM coordinator for Yorkshire and the Humber) handed out lots of free learning resources to the teachers. One of these was polymorph, a thermoplastic which can be molded when heated. Knowing I was a chemist, he gave me a free pack of polymorph which I am extremely excited to play around with. All in all, a successful day.