Modules & Lecturers

Hello,

The first post about this semester is going to be about my modules and my lecturers, seen as I am in London for university first of all. Although all my modules are officially yearly, I still had several news in this term!

EVOLUTION & ECOLOGY

Last term we did the evolutionary part of this module and then it ended... unfortunately. This term we started Ecology, and for as much as I like it I don’t actually love it nearly as much as I liked Evolution. The lecturer is the same as the one I had  for the second half of Evolution and I like his way of lecturing! He is pretty nice as a person as well, even though he shouts at us every single time the lecture is due to start. 

CELL BIOLOGY & PHYSIOLOGY

Physiology is not my favourite thing, but at least for the first few weeks of term it was the lecture I was always looking forward to. I had this wonderfully amazing lecturer, Dr Rachel O’Callaghan, who has so much enthusiasm for what she teaches. She talks very very quickly, which should make me confused but it never did as I simply felt like I couldn’t get distracted and was very enthusiastic all the time while listening to her. She is that good, yes! She taught us about how the body works, some functions, regulatory systems, etc... before she was substituted for a few weeks. The two lecturers who came in her place were really boring (so much that one has been named “Boring guy” by my group), and one fo them I barely know what he looks like because I missed one of his lectures and for the rest of it he didn’t leave much of an impression on me. But form this week we are getting Ms O’Callaghan back and I am so happy about that, I am actually looking forward to lectures!!

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

I never hated this module before, now I do, but not because of the contents... it’s because of my lecturers there. My main lecturer is a professor that I really can’t stand, because he is mean and rude! The first lecture I thought he was funny in a weird way, as in “his jokes were strange but funny” kind of way, then he just started getting a annoying and mean. The breakthrough came during a Lab session when I was sick and he was mean to me and i never really forgave him for that... now I can’t really concentrate on his lectures and really dread going to Molecular. The second lecturer is Boring Guy sooooo... Also, the fact that this module is not on the main campus but in Whitechapel, and therefore I have to commute (right, about 10 minutes lol), doesn’t help... The main topic of this semester has been proteins and amino acids, which I actually find interesting!

PRACTICAL & ANALYTICAL BIOLOGY

Lab this term has been pretty interesting! For the first two weeks we worked on protein purification and for as difficult as it might have been at first I found that very nice to learn. I really enjoyed those experiments! The only flaw was that the mean lecturer ran this Labs so I wasn’t impressed with that at all... thank goodness we have demonstrators who help us and we don’t have to talk to him much!

We also had another Thinking Workshop, during which we had to answer three different tasks and then choose one to hand in as usual. This term our group only has four components (Elena isn’t with us anymore, which I will explain in a later post), so we needed a fifth person to join in for the workshop: this woman, Anna, who I have noticed lots of times because she must be around 30 or so, joined us and we worked pretty well all together. well, kind, of. We do chat a lot, and she was a bit left out, poor woman... but at least we finished the tasks properly!

The last Lab session was partly good and partly bad. Bad because for the first half we had to handle worms... living worms. And test their reflexes! Andrea and I were all but happy about that and we were a pair, so had a hard time getting to the end of the experiment... Coral and Laurana, on the other hand, were very happy of working with worms xD it was hilarious because our worm was on the floor at the beginning of the session, for some mysterious reason, and our demonstrator was scared of it so we had to call another demonstrator to pick it up for us as none of us wanted to get too close to it lol And then our worm was probably traumatised by being on the floor and didn’t react at all to stimuli... so we had to get another one, who was over-reactive :( We were laughing a lot, but Andrea and I had goose bumps most of the time!

The second half of the experiment was about human reflexes, so it was much better and it was soooo much fun, dropping and catching (or trying to) a ruler while testing our reaction time.
Oh yeah, I didn’t mention it but this Lab was also lovely because we had Ms O’Callaghan as our supervisor instead of the mean lecturer, so we all were a lot more relaxed and happy!

TUTORIAL

I have had three tutorial meetings and a one-to-one session with my tutor. During the communal meetings we had to deliver presentations about scientific articles (e.g. one about Batesian mimicry), discuss sourcing and referencing and the essays that we had to hand it after the Christmas holiday. I got A for my essay, by the way! The title was “Structure and function in Biology through a range of examples” and I talked about ribosomes, oocytes and the heart – I wanted to show how structure-function relationships are important at every level of organisation, from organelles to full-sized and fundamental organs.

In my one-to-one meeting I simply had a chat with my tutor about my impressions on university, how I had found it returning after the holiday and then... it turned into a friendly chat about his little daughter (I saw a picture and asked about her) and about Australia, our common ground and love.

Thinking back on my first term at Queen Mary

I suppose this post was to be expected, at the end of the first term at uni: I am going to go through the main elements of these months and summarise my impressions on everything.

Biology course

Since I am in London to study, I should definitely start from my course. In general, I have to say I really like it, because it gives me a broad background in Biology and it helps patching up the holes in my Biology knowledge derived from not doing much Biology at school in the past. 

Evolution has been my absolute favourite module, both because of my lecturers and because of the topics we covered. Unfortunately we won’t have this subject in next term, but at least now I am even more sure that I want to go on with Evolutionary Biology next year when I can choose my modules!

Cell Biology is on the other side of the spectrum... I didn’t like it very much mainly because of the lecturers. I liked my first teacher at the beginning, but then he became mean to the class, and I never liked either of the other lecturers we had. The topics weren’t bad, but I am not into cell biology that much...

In the middle there is Molecular Biology :) Not as amazing as Evolution, but still very good. We had two great and interesting lecturers, who worked hard to keep us attentive on the lessons! Both of them were very funny as well and made us laugh every single time :P

My last module is Lab (Practical and Analytical Biology), which doesn’t rank anywhere because it’s too different from the other completely theoretical ones! At first I was scared I wouldn’t be any good at this, as I have never worked in a proper lab, but it turned out to be easier than I thought. It just took a few weeks to get used to and then I started doing my work with more enthusiasm and a lot more easily than at the beginning! It was fun to work together with my friends to solve some exercises that we can’t understand at first to then find out that they are not impossible. Lab turned out to be fun and I am enjoying a lot the opportunity of doing experiments first hand! 

Preparing to count blood cells in Lab

London, my new city

I hadn’t thought about it this way, yet, until a friend of mine mentioned in an email that I was sightseeing my “own city”. I had to do a double-take before realising she was talking about London, but she is right! London is my city now :) Though, I don’t feel like I really know London. I live in my safe bubble on campus, which feels like it has its own place not belonging to a city. I love it, I love it and I love it, I’d repeat it a hundred times, but it doesn’t feel like London that much. Of London, I know the touristic areas and some other parts that are near uni, but I can’t say I know it as my city. Well, I have lived there only three months, I have plenty of time to get to know it I suppose! 

Anyway, London is an amazing city, so busy and so original! I was scared by its being so huge, and I still am, but it’s also a place that gives you the opportunity to see things you can’t see anywhere else and do stuff you can only do in London! I have discovered new hobbies here, thanks to friends, but also thanks to the fact that I’m in London because I wouldn’t have been able to develop these passions anywhere else. The most important example right now is Musical Theatre :) I had no idea I would like it so much and being near the West End allows me to enjoy it a lot! Aside from actually seeing the musicals in this wonderful location, I also decided I am interested in trying musical theatre as a hobby... and that’s why I am going to start taking singing lessons in January, to get the basics I need to start a musical theatre course afterwards :)

Living on my own

There are aspects of it I like, others I don’t particularly enjoy, but in general it’s a great experience. It’s not that I didn’t like living at home, but being by myself helped me grow a lot, it helped me becoming more mature and learning quickly things that it would have taken me a lot longer to learn otherwise. I hate washing the dishes after meals, that’s the worst thing for me, but I don’t mind that much cleaning my room, doing the washing or cooking. I didn’t know that before, but I actually kind of enjoy doing these things for myself because they make me feel responsible and adult!

Of course this year is special, because I am living on campus, where I still have someone checking that I don’t mess up too badly. Residential Services do  cover the basics, they clean the communal areas, they take care of major issues and they pay bills for us taking them from our general rental fee. Next year will be another story, because next year will be when I have to move out of campus! Thankfully, I have met someone I want to move out with next year and I am not by myself in this, but it’s kind of scary to think about. From the end of the first week, I Have been thinking about next year and I have been talking about moving out, mainly with my flat mate and friend Isabela. The main topic we have in our mind when we think of next year is the house we will have to move to. We still haven’t found one, fairly enough since we haven’t done serious searching, but that’s not our biggest worry right now. At the moment we are still trying to work out who is going to be living in that house! We often have discussions on this, on the possibilities we have and the problems that might arise, and we end up looking at houses online pretty regularly, just to try and convince ourselves that we can make it! I am sure we can, but right now it is all very confusing and I am a bit scared of next year... moving out completely will be hard and  complications might come up often. I mean, this year we are in a safe bubble on campus, where we have cleaners for the shared areas, where our bills are included in the rent (therefore we have only one deadline to worry about), where everything is close by, where we have our own private and lockable rooms if we want to be alone. Next year it will all be different! Sharing a proper house will mean totally growing up, with no looking back because we will be officially facing all the aspects of living on our own. Sure, we won’t be working full time, we will still be students, but in a different way. We will have to be completely independent and rely on our abilities all the time, with pretty much only the help of our flat mates. [The last few lines of this were taken from a previous post]. All of this said, I am positive that it will all work out soon!

People I’ve met, friends & acquaintances

I left this paragraph for the end of the post, even though it’s such an important part of my life in London! There are so many people I have met in these months, but I can only consider a few as friends. I have plenty of acquaintances and some nearly-friends in London, but those I actually consider friends are about 7 :) I was thinking of it the other day and I was listing them to myself: it’s a big number, to be fair, but this just shows that I am very lucky in meeting the right people for me!

Coincidences do happen. I have started believing so after all the experiences I’ve had so far, where I have found amazing people on my way :) But this time one of the coincidences is even bigger! The best friend I have made in England, the person with whom I share so many of my hobbies and I love spending time with the most happened to be living in my same flat! We are doing pretty much the same course, we live in front of each other and we have so much in common that sometimes I am still surprised... if I can’t call this the luckiest coincidence, I don’t know what would be!  I have been so lucky in meeting Isabela here and becoming friends with her and I am so glad I made that effort the first week to overcome shyness, because it made the rest of my stay at Queen Mary so so much better :) I can never get bored or lonely, because we spend so much time together, between movies to watch, cosplays to plan, stars to "stalk" online, chats or even doing our own things but still in the same room.

 

Again outside my course, and outside anything else for that matters, there is Maria Stella. We met by chance, because we both knew Tommaso (my flat mate, her ex-class mate), at the very beginning and we became friends so quickly! She is my Once Upon a Time partner, the third person in our little amazing trio of friends. We don’t have a course in common, we don’t share a flat, but being friends and hanging out together just came natural and is always so good :) 

 

Our trio

Last but not least among the people outside Biology, are my other flat mates! Tommaso, the other Italian in my flat, who is kind of a “little” brother to me (well, he is only a few months younger, but that’s the feeling). I wasn’t really happy about having another Italian in the flat at first, but Tommaso is lovely and I really enjoy spending time with him and talking about our days or just laughing about random stuff that comes up at the most random moments :) Melanie, with whom I have started spending more time lately and that I hope I’ll get to know better with time, after a beginning in which we rarely saw each other. Josh, whom I barely see... he is a ghost in our flat, he is nice and kind when he is around, but that happens so rarely that I am not sure I can say he is my friend! 

Isabela, Tommaso and I

Eventually, here I am to talk about my course friends! I didn’t leave them to the end because they are less important, but because I preferred separating the two categories. My little group is composed of five people, including me. Andrea, Laurana, Coral and Elena are my awesome friend from the course, with whom I spend all my lessons, I revise, do assignments, hang out for lunch... we started out only seeing each other in class, now we are doing some more together, we have been to the theatre, we went out for lunch several times including an a great and funny Christmas lunch (where Elena was missing). The group was born so quickly, in a matter of days during Freshers’ week! I met Andrea on the Tuesday, on the Wednesday I got to know Coral and Elena and finally on the Thursday also Laurana joined us :) Again, it all happened by chance, and I am so glad it did *_* Andrea is probably my closest friend among all of them, because we share the tutorial group and we have our routine-Friday when we work together on assignments and go for lunch! Laurana is one of the funniest people ever lol We have some musical taste in common, but that’s not the reason I like her so much: she is so lovely all the time and she makes me laugh too much :) Coral is the sweet and quiet girl in the group, I would say, but that doesn’t make her less of a friend to me and I actually really like spending time with her!! Lately I have seen Elena a lot less than I used to, because she spends some time with us and some with her other group (the Medical Engineering people, because that’s her specific course), but when she is with us she is so funny as well and she is sweet and friendly and she is the one who always manages to get us through thinking workshops because she is a good group leader :)

Elena, me, Coral, Andrea and Laurana after Lab

Laurana, Andrea and me at Costa for a hot drink

Xmas lunch (Coral, Lauran, me and Andrea)

Leftover bits and pieces...

• I became a Student Ambassador and now I have the opportunity of sharing with future students my experience at Queen Mary. Lovely job, isn’t it? I don’t need to fake any enthusiasm, because it’s all real, I get to tell my story to people who want to hear it and are looking up to me to know what their university life will be like. It’s a lot of responsibility, to be fair, but I’m up to it, because I owe so much to those Ambassadors who convinced me to choose Queen Mary last year!

• Theatre has become an important and wonderful part of my life, surprisingly! I never particularly liked theatre, but musicals changed it all :) So far I have only seen two (Wicked and Les Miserables), and I am about to repeat one of them in a month and a bit, but I know songs from various musicals and I already have a list of what I am going to see next! Moreover, as I mentioned above, from January I will be spending my Tuesday nights at City Academy, attending a singing course (level 1, of course – I am most definitely a beginner!) with Isabela. The idea is that if I get some vocal basics, then I can move on to musical theatre next year – as a hobby of course :)
• Societies – When it was the time of the Freshers’ fair at the very beginning, I signed up to something like 6 societies because they all sounded awesome... I still think they are great, but I haven’t been attending many events :( Sometimes I simply forgot to, some others I gave up because I was tired or didn’t feel like it... In the end I have been to a pizza/quiz night with the Biology society, a pub meeting with the Equality society, the MCM Comic Con with the Anime society, an introductory meeting with the science magazine (I have also carried out an interview, but it hasn’t been published yet) and an exhibition with the photography society. I have met a few people throughout the societies, but I didn’t really keep in touch with many. Though, the one I have talked to the most is Fenn from the photography society, who is a third year student in Zoology, therefore she told me so much about my future years! I also enjoyed being with the people from the anime society at the MCM but I haven’t seen any of them since then...
   

Last week of first term - part 2

Here you go, this is the second part of the week. I thought I’d separate it in two posts to avoid overloading single posts, since a lot happened and everything comes with plenty of pictures!

Wednesday 10/12: waking up with a cold is never fun and when it happened that morning I wasn’t happy at all! But I suppose it could be expected after walking around in the cold for ages on Tuesday. For most of the day I did housework, doing the washing (finally! I was in desperate need of clothes after two weeks without doing the washing!) and cleaning my room and bathroom. When I finished with that, I wrote some Christmas cards, waiting for Maria Stella to call me.

From about 5pm to 8 o’clock I stayed at her place, helping her revise for her midsessionals. She would repeat the notions to me, while I was reading from her notes since I don’t know anything about Law. To be honest, I found all of it pretty interesting to listen to, even though I wouldn’t want to have to study it :) Helping her with her course is turning out to be very useful to me, between what I learn about writing/proofreading essays and about British Law.

I came home for dinner and ate with Tommaso, his friend Fabio and Isabela, then Isabela and I went to my room and started talking about the future. The main topic we have in our mind when we think of next year is the house we will have to move to. We still haven’t found one, fairly enough since we haven’t done serious searching, but that’s not our biggest worry right now. At the moment we are still trying to work out who is going to be living in that house! That’s what our Wednesday discussion was about and we went on talking for a long time, looking at the different possibilities and problems. We also ended up looking up houses to be let, just to try and convince ourselves that we can make it! I am sure we can, but right now it is all very confusing and I am a bit scared of next year... moving out completely will be hard and  complications might arise often. I mean, this year we are in a safe bubble on campus, where we have cleaners for the shared areas, where our bills are included in the rent (therefore we have only one deadline to worry about), where everything is close by, where we have our own private and lockable rooms if we want to be alone. Next year it will all be different! Sharing a proper house will mean totally growing up, with no looking back because we will be officially facing all the aspects of living on our own. Sure, we won’t be working full time, we will still be students, but in a different way. We will have to be completely independent and rely on our abilities all the time, with pretty much only the help of our flat mates.

Thursday 11/12: my last day of lesson!!! Between 9 and 11am there was the last lecture of term 1 for us Biology students: Molecular Biology. The first half of the lecture was normal, then the lecturer started being soooo funny and we couldn’t stop laughing LOL In fact, when our group left the building to go out for lunch to celebrate we were still laughing a lot! Elena wasn’t there, but the four of us that were had a lovely lunch at the Half Moon, near uni, chatting and having fun for a couple of hours :) Our lunch seemed to have been planned on purpose: Laurana and Coral, sitting on the same part of the table, ordered the same Traditional Breakfast; Andrea and I, on the other side of the table, got pork ribs! Moreover, in the middle of the table there was a plate of bacon and hash browns to be shared by me and Andrea, which had confused the cashier and the waitress a lot because it was a weird combination to have without the rest of the Traditional Breakfast :P 

Laurana, Andrea, me and Coral at Half Moon

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon and the evening I blogged a lot and I finally got up to date with the events, for the first time in a couple of months: I was a very happy girl afterwards!

Friday 12/12: the last day of term for everyone else :) I woke up around 8.15 to Skype my Australian host family and some family friends (with various children) who were going to be at their house for an early Christmas party. However, something happened and they couldn’t talk to me, so I waited to give a Christmas card to our cleaner here at the flat on behalf of me and Isabela (who was at lecture but happened to walk back in exactly when the cleaner came!) and then I went back to sleep... I was feeling awful because of my cold! I got up again around 1pm, feeling a great lot better thankfully :)

Soon after lunch, it was time for the “flat” Secret Santa. Well, let’s say “circle Santa”, since it was just me, Isabela and Melanie! Anyway, it was great :) Melanie gave me a wonderfully cute doll of baby Tinkerbell, from the Disney store, something I had been admiring for a while! Then, Melanie received the Olaf from Isabela and Isabela a panda-pyjamas from me :) When we were done, Maria Stella arrived and we gave her her onesie, which she had specifically asked for so it wasn’t really a surprise!

 

Around 4 o’clock, we left to go to Westfield Shopping Centre, where Maria Stella had to buy a couple of presents and we ended up wandering around for a couple of hours! By 7pm, we were starving and Isabela and I were dreading the idea of still having to make and cook the pizza we were planning to have... so we bought a frozen one and we ended up cooking that one once back at the flat. It wasn’t a wonderful pizza, but it was fine :)

When dinner was over the two of us Skyped Maria Stella, who had gone back to her flat to eat, to make a decision upon what we would do during the night. The original plan was to go out in Central London, but with me as sick as I was (still my cold) and Maria Stella not feeling too well it didn’t make much sense. Moreover, Isabela had been invited by one of her friends from the Harry Potter society to go to a flat party and Melanie had suggested to go to the end of year party at Drapers. We had three options and it took ages to decide! Isabela wanted to go to the flat party to socialise with the people from her society and I totally agreed, so I told her I would go with her. Maria Stella, though, still wanted to go to Central London or, at the very least, to Drapers... after a while we compromised on going to Drapers for an hour and then moving to the flat party. It was about 9pm then and we were meant to go out at 10.20 so there was plenty of time... during which I was meant to wash my hair! However, I ended up Skyping Rebecca (Australian host mum) to ask what had happened in the morning. I meant it to be a quick chat, but she was already Skyping with her mum and sister so I joined their video conference a talked to all of them :) After a while... a little someone joined the conversation, making me very very happy: Hannah *_* She is one of the children I used to play with down in Australia and she is soooo cute. Because of all these things summed together, I ended up talking for about 45 minutes and then I had to rush to wash my hair and get ready. Miracle of miracles: I made it!

We queued at Drapers from 10.30 to almost 11.30, since we hadn’t bought a ticket and during this time I ended up talking with a very cute boy in front of me. His name is Michael and he is in my course apparently! Around 11.30 we left the queue and gave up on Drapers, since it was the time we had planned to go to the flat party :) At the flat there were other 5 people, because the rest of the guests had left to go to Drapers (the opposite of us lol), and we chatted for a while. Then our host proposed a drinking game in which you had to pick a card and do something that was associated with the number (for example, with number six all the boys had to drink)... problem is, I don’t drink and Maria Stella and Isabela drink very little and only rarely, so we ended up playing with water :P It was hilarious! The three of us weren’t bothered even a little when we had to drink, since it was only water, whereas some of the others were quite drunk soon. It was a funny kind of drunkenness luckily! 

Queuing for Drapers

We stayed there until 1am, then we went to Maria Stella’s flat for a little bit to plan the next day and Isabela and I eventually came back home. In theory, Maria Stella had suggested we go to bed immediately so we’d be rested the next day and maybe we could even go out at night, but... well, we didn’t exactly listen to her! First in the kitchen (with a hot tea to try to warm up after the freezing cold outside) then in Isabela’s room,  we talked and talked and talked, jumping among the topics. We went from serious discussions, to lighter ones and laughs when I threw a little furry monster-toy to her and she started screaming before bringing it quickly back to my room (where it belongs). For example, we discussed distant relationships (in my case, Italy and Australia) and what parts are harder for us, impressions on the first term of university, our flat mates... we also agreed again on what a coincidence it was to find someone sharing most of our hobbies and being in the same flat! This had been Melanie’s observation some time ago and we had dismissed it because it was still too early in the term, but now it’s obvious what a lucky coincidence it has been. It was a talking-night that went on until almost 5am, because we had so much to talk about. We live together, we spend so much time together and we always end up having so much to say at night! I think it’s because the night brings out deeper topics, which makes sense.

Saturday 13/12: luckily, I got to sleep in until 12 o’clock after going to sleep so late and then I managed to do something I had said I would do for over a month... I threw water at Isabela to wake her up :P To be fair, I missed her in the darkness and only wet the pillow, but it was effective enough hahaha

Afterwards, I had breakfast and I Skyped my friend Giorgia for over an hour and a half, since we hadn’t talked since when she was here a month ago (well, we texted, but we never actually spoke). At the end of the call, I tidied my room and got ready to go out. Just before we met Maria Stella at 5pm, it was time to say goodbye to Tommaso, who was leaving for Italy. I was expecting a quick goodbye, not particularly warm, instead Tommaso surprised me and Isabela by hugging us and saying he will miss us :) Awwww sweet! I will miss him too, to be honest, because we have grown closer over the last weeks!

The plan for the day was to go around London and look at Christmas decorations. Things changed a bit, but we still managed to see plenty of lovely Christmas lights and decorations *_* Maria Stella, Isabela and I left campus at 5 o’clock and went to Oxford Street, where we went into a few shops where Maria Stella and I needed to go: River Island (for a hat that I didn’t buy, though I got a present for Giorgia), Urban Outfitters (for Maria Stella’s gloves), Primark (for my hat, some furry slippers for various people and my gloves) and various others where we didn’t buy anything. After touring among the little streets all lit up with beautiful fairylights, we stopped for a quick dinner at McDonalds, as we were starving, and then we caught a bus to Piccadilly Circus. Also this square was very decorated, even though it wasn’t as good as last year apparently. 

 

 

 It was about 11.45 when we went to the bus stop to come back home. We had decided to avoid the tube and travel on the surface to look around, but when the trip turned out to take an hour... we were all pretty much sleeping/relaxing on the bus. Anyway, it took ages to get home and it was almost 1am when we said goodbye to Maria Stella, who left for Italy on Sunday morning! This was goodbye number two with people leaving, therefore excluding the girls from Biology. It’s already sad now... I wonder what it will be like at the end of the year :( And they are not even proper goodbyes, but only “see you after the holiday!”.  
I went to bed (in my room, this time) as soon as I could, as I was dead...