by a university student
(Ben Hales)
Hi everyone, time for the second blog. In this instalment I'm going to give you a rundown of the actual goings-on of a typical day at Uni. What's worth bearing in mind when reading this is that I'm talking about the pre-pandemic situation which will hopefully be what you lot will experience when you head back to uni. A day on campus will normally contain maybe two or three of the following things.
Sitting around drinking tea
Lectures
Practicals
Tutorials
Seminars/Workshops
Working in the Library
And I thought it would be helpful to tell you a little about each. I am aware that university can seem occasionally intimidating ... Perhaps seen as a place where smart people go to do smart things and talk about Descartes, Chopin and the effect of macroeconomic trends on commodity trading. It isn't, you're more likely to have a conversation about Love Island or that weird smell in library, than you are about anything like that. And that's fine. So let's get demystifying...
Sitting around and drinking tea: look, I'm not actually going to write a whole section on this, but it is probably important to note that if I were to list these activities in order of the amount of time, I spent doing them this would remain at the top.
(New Hunt’s House Lecture Hall 1, or maybe 2, honestly they both look the same- where I had the majority of my lectures in first year.)
Lectures: These are the ones that get the most attention, both in popular culture (if you watch any tv show that's anywhere near a university they'll have a scene where some erudite academic is giving a lecture to hundreds of students, writing on a blackboard. No one does that now, it's all PowerPoint). These should last about 50 minutes or so although they do tend to run long. During these you'll be expected to take notes and afterwards its good practice to read over them and make sure they're in good shape. At King’s, lectures are also recorded which is handy if you missed anything during the lecture. This is how most of the stuff that you are expected to know is told to you, they're not exactly exciting (barring the occasional academic joke) but they are necessary.
Practicals: These can also be pretty intimidating but there's nothing to worry about. They're not really any different from those you'll have at school, just larger in scale. At King's there'll be about 70 of us in one of the big labs, working through the practical which is laid out in booklets. They are usually run by a single academic who'll introduce the practical and guide us through it just like a teacher would at school. Often you will find a couple of PhD students bumbling around to help out/ check all's going well/to be asked questions. Some of the things you are doing may be a little more advanced than you are used to for your A levels, but it's not that much of a change. Some of the practicals may be the basis for your coursework, so after these you're going to have to write up lab reports, but overall, it's nothing too scary. Certainly not as much of a leap from secondary school as you may have feared.
Tutorials: Tutorials means different things at different universities. At some this will mean sitting down in a group of 5 or fewer students with an academic and going over a set piece of work or topic. At King’s Tutorials tend to be a bit larger, around 20 students or so. What you will normally do is talk about the topic of the tutorial, for example.... Pharmacology of the CNS (Central Nervous System) with an academic who works in the field (or at least an adjacent field). You'll typically have done some prep before the session working through some questions or reading a paper or two that you've been given. Again, nothing too scary.
Seminars/Workshops: Tutorials but larger, maybe around 40 students or so (although there will frequently be fewer as some students just won't turn up). Pretty similar in purpose, but perhaps with a greater focus on working during the session as opposed to working beforehand (although for many this is still required). These are more likely to involve working with fellow undergraduates and are pretty great place to meet and get to know new people on your course. Generally pretty chill as long as you are paying attention.
(Wills library, the smaller of the two libraries that I tend to use)
Working in the Library: A pretty common phrase that you will hear when studying is "I'm off to do some work in the library". Occasionally students will actually mean this and then head off to the library to review some notes from a lecture. Come the end of year you will see students sitting in a corner ingesting about five cans of red bull and staring frantically at their screens while muttering to themselves. However, most of the time this is not the case, and that's fine. Most of the time people in the library are just sitting around half doing work and half looking at YouTube videos on their phones while eating a sandwich. Honestly, that's how I spend most of my time, and when I have a look around it seems to be what everyone else is doing too.
Hopefully, that's cleared some stuff up for you, and made Uni a little more relatable/approachable/boring (delete as appropriate).
Tomorrow there's going to be a blog from me and Lily on Science content creators, so hopefully we’ll see you then.
Also here is a science joke for your consumption...
