Author: Daisy

Whether you’re reading this before applying to university, or you’ve had your offers through and are trying to decide which university to choose, here are some things I wish I’d considered when making my choice.

1. Do you want to study local or move away?
   So, this might seem like quite an obvious consideration… but really think about whether you want to move away. If, like I was, you’re in your mid twenties and live somewhere that you have well established friendships/relationships and family members then it might be harder moving far away.
   I applied to Bristol uni because it offered BSc Cancer Biology, and as this was what I wanted to get in to I decided this was where I would go. Whilst I was glad I got in to Bristol uni, I hadn’t given the move much thought until I was there and suddenly felt very lonely. It definitely impacted my ability to study as a lot of my time was spent trying to settle in to a new city and find friends there, or spent travelling back home every other weekend.
   
2. Do you get to pick any modules, and if so what modules are there to choose from?
   Again, another mistake I made in choosing Bristol was that I was so blinkered on this being the only course that focussed on my area of interest that I neglected to actually look at what I would be studying. It turned out that on my ‘Cancer Biology’ degree I was infact going to be learning biochemistry, microbiology, virology, immunology, and one module on cancer. Now, these do all have their role in learning about cancer, but what I hadn’t identified was that I actually didn’t find these things interesting and instead preferred learning about cellular mechanisms and molecular interactions. I was still set on doing the degree with the title that sounded like something I wanted to do, instead of looking at whether the content would actually teach me what I wanted to know.
   
3. What assessment methods are used, and how are these weighted?
   One enormous error I made was that I assumed there would be a mixture of assessments and each would be weighted roughly the same (i.e. exams = 30%, coursework = 40% and presentation = 30%). Oh boy I was wrong. At Bristol it turned out that for every year, for every module on my course, the assessments were weighted as follows: 5% midterm exams, 15% coursework and 80% end of term exams.
   Now, this is great if you don’t crumble under pressure and can remember an entire semesters work in detail… (who are these rare mystical creatures anyway!?).

The main thing to remeber is that university choice is very personal. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, and this will impact your choice of where to study. I just wish I’d made a more informed choice the first time round, rather than hastily rushing in to a Russell Group university with a good reputation, only to find that in a sink or swim situation it turns out actually I’m in the former party.

I am so much happier now that I am studying at Sussex. There are so many modules to choose from, which gives me total flexibility over my studies, different modules have different assessment methods and weightings (for example two of my modules this year have been 100% coursework assessed, others have been 50% exam 50% coursework). And I am local to my home town, so seeing friends and family is just part of my normal life and I don’t have the added pressure of trying to settle in to somewhere new. Of course, this is what has ended up working for me, and I wouldn’t have realised this had I not made the mistake of going to Bristol… so, every cloud!

When I asked my Instagram followers what they’d like to see on the blog, this seemed to be what was requested! So here goes! I’m going to stop by 5 important things about me:

1. How did I get interested in science?
Well… this is a bit of a daft story… but I was watching TV about 5 years ago, and there was a show called Stand Up To Cancer. During this show, I naively thought ‘how can they not have cured it yet… it can’t be that hard?’. Ha ha ha… Let’s all laugh together!!!
However, this did pique my interest in science and I bought myself a book called ‘Cancer: A Beginners Guide’. I was able to understand most of it, but I realised there were (obviously) huge gaps in my knowledge. I then started to google some of the terms, and started to make sense of things and this just got me more and more hooked.
Having established that this wasn’t just a whim, I spent some time researching how to go about getting in to cancer research as a career. It transpired, having no relevant A Levels, that I would need to go to college to do an Access to Higher Education course which would then allow me to (hopefully) get in to university.
So that’s what I did. I obtained 45/45 credits at distinction, and this got me a place at the University of Bristol to study Cancer Biology. Goal achieved… tick!

2. Personal life
I often brush over this part of my life, but it’s probably worth mentioning some other big decisions I had been making around the same time as all of the college/uni stuff. I was actually engaged at the age of 23, and during my engagement I started to see a different side to my fiancé… one that was turning out to be a little too traditional and linear for my liking. Once we were married (at the age of 25) I was to stop having any ambitions and start popping out babies (or so my fiancé thought). This didn’t sit well with me, unsurprisingly. I am naturally quite an ambitious person, I often jump on an idea and work tirelessly until it’s finished. This has it’s pros and cons, but it is just part of who I am. If I see/think of something good, I run at it full speed.
So I had applied to college and been offered a place to start in September 2015, however, around the same time as this I found myself having doubts about spending the rest of my life with this man who didn’t want to see me (or let me for that matter) achieve my goals. Eventually I came to my senses and called it a day with him, but this bought with it some delays in getting started at college, and eventually started in September 2016.

3. Hobbies
Well… where to start!! I’d say my most consistent hobby has been crafts, I like anything based around thread, fabric and design so this could be sewing, crochet, embroidery, sketching or painting. I go through phases of having a main interest but it’s always based around these core themes.

I also like a lot of activity based things! I started climbing recently and once I got over the horror of having to get down from the top of the wall, I felt such a sense of achievement.

4. What did I do before this?
I’ve had all your typical jobs like working in a cafe and a call centre. I will always regret turning down a job as a Christmas elf in Santas grotto, and I frequently kick myself for not going to the interview I had with MI5 when I was 21.

However, I have also had a reasonably unconventional career for most of my twenties… from the age of 21 I ran my own driving school for 6 years. When I qualified I was the youngest driving instructor in the country! I really don’t remember what made me want to get in to this in high school, other than the fact I loved my driving lessons! I really really loved my time doing this job and made a few incredible friends. But as we know, all good things must come to an end. By the time I’d discovered my love for science, and postponed starting my journey by a year I was more than ready to put this job to bed.

5. Future goals
CURE CANCER! Well, that’s what I would have said if you’d asked me 5 years ago, when I first saw Stand Up To Cancer. I now realise it is infinitely more complex than finding a single cure. Every type of cancer is individual, and every type of cancer in every different person is unique… so having a ‘one cure fits all’ approach is going to prove a little challenging. You know how they say ‘change the plan not the goal’? Well, I’m going to be a little rebel and change that goal… So, with that in mind I would like love to contribute in some way to finding a cure for a cancer. Whether this is researching a cause or a potential therapy, this is the area I want to be involved in. During my time at Bristol I was also exposed briefly to an area of science called developmental biology… this BLEW MY MIND, so there’s a possibility I would like to move more in that direction as I progress on my journey. And I’ve always been intrigued by paediatric cancers… so who knows, maybe I’ll end up overlapping them in some way in the future.

So that’s me in a nutshell! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading 🙂

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. — Carl Sagan

This time two years ago I was getting myself ready to move to Bristol. I had accepted a place to study Cancer Biology and Immunology and despite being ecstatic about getting in, I was starting to feel the nerves and uncertainty surrounding my decision.

I had spent the 9 months prior to this, working my butt off at college, striving to get the grades I needed to be accepted by the oh so prestigious University of Bristol. I loved every minute of college. I really did. I was surrounded by classmates who genuinely wanted to learn. I was able to focus hard on my studies without being judged, and there was an unspoken mutual desire to do well.

I seemed to strike a fairly good study/life balance relatively early on where I would go through phases of not socialising in the evenings/weekends for a few weeks, allowing me to knuckle down and get my assignments done. And then when I’d completed those, I would allow myself a night or two (or three) off and I’d let my hair down, leaving me refreshed and socially satisfied for another few weeks. I’m aware this wouldn’t be a good strategy for some people, but it worked really well for me as I got a lot of social interaction in class and 4 afternoons a week at work.

The terms flew by, and before we knew it we were laying on the college green revising before our final exam. I got the grades I needed to get in to Bristol, and I couldn’t have been prouder. For the first time in my life, I had worked hard in school and achieved good grades. Whilst my high school grades as a teenager hadn’t been bad, they weren’t anything to boast about.

I think at some point over the summer I began to realise that, actually, I wasn’t too sure about this whole ‘move to Bristol’ plan that I’d been harping on about for the last year or so. I started to get panicky, I would cry a LOT and generally just had a bad feeling about it all. But, for whatever bizarre reason, I went against my gut feeling and ploughed on regardless – after all I’d worked so hard to get there, it would be silly NOT to give it a go, right?

I was going through a strange ‘I must be independent’ phase of my life back then, so I took myself off to Bristol for the day to find somewhere to live. I had decided I wanted to live alone, because I wasn’t too sure about living with other mature students in case we didn’t get on, and I couldn’t be dealing with petty bitchy drama alongside my studies. So instead I opted for isolation with an occasional side of interaction with the staff in the pizza shop below my studio.

The first alarm bells rang during freshers week, when we were instructed to complete some pre-course assignments once we had had our schools welcome talk (I was part of the school of Cellular and Molecular Medicine). I had intended to spend freshers week on some course preparation anyway (think along the lines of revising college notes, maybe reading a couple of chapter introductions from the reading list), so I wasn’t too put out by this request from the course leader. What I was not ready for was assignments on topics we were yet to actually be taught… not fun, and it did not make me feel good.

Still, not to worry though… because I am a Bristol University student. Ra ra ra. These things don’t phase me, because I am worthy of being here. I am here to work hard, to learn, to study, to absorb. Maybe they were just giving us a teaser for the end of the year, you know like ‘aim to be able to understand these topics’.

No. I was wrong. That was just the standard they expected us to be at. Fuck.

I’ll save the details for another post, but I didn’t enjoy my time at Bristol. The university has a loooooong way to go in terms of supporting students, although I think they know this now, following news reports on the shocking number of it’s students committing suicide (during my 6 months there, 10 UoB students took their lives…).

Eventually, a month before the end of the academic year, I decided to call it a day, packed an overnight bag and got the train home. In hindsight it would probably have been sensible to stick it out for the final month, but you know… why not throw £9,250 down the drain!? I’d had a real wobble upon my return from the Christmas break, and decided it might be a good idea to apply to some new universities for the coming September, as I wasn’t feeling hopeful that I would pass the summer exams and this way at least I would have my plan B already in place.

Having accepted an offer to study at a new university, when I got home I decided to defer this start date by a year and I took some time out of academia.

Fast forward 16 very monotonous and frustratingly corporate months, and HERE WE ARE. Ready and raring to go again! I’ve got a much clearer idea of how I’m going to navigate university this time, and have spent a bit of time organising and familiarising myself with various apps, so that I’m ready to hit the ground running when I start.

So, there we go! A whistle stop tour of my last couple of years, and this means that my first post done (tick)!