Student holidays at home and abroad

For final year students, last Thursday was results day and, just like last year, I had conveniently booked a holiday during that week.

I was in Amsterdam for four days with my girlfriend and as I got my first text telling me that our results had been put online, we rushed to find a waffle shop with free Wi-Fi.

It was then, whilst eating my waffle topped with chocolate sauce and whipped cream, that I found out I had been awarded a first class honours for my Masters in Physics! I was over the moon and the knowledge made my waffle taste even nicer than it already did!

Amsterdam is a beautiful city, notable for its architecture and canals. 

Naturally that moment became one of my holiday highlights, along with watching the sea lion show at the local zoo, taking a relaxing canal tour through the city and engaging with the interactive exhibits at the Amsterdam Museum. Whilst Amsterdam is known for being a party city, it also has a large amount of culture, including the fascinating van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum, which houses an enormous gallery of 17th Century paintings amongst other collections.

The sea lions were incredible. 

As I mentioned above, this is not my first holiday whilst I’ve been at University; I went to the beautiful Belgian town of Brugge last year and I have also been on two less-cultured holidays to Marmaris and Magaluf. With budget airlines and great deals to be found online (we found a four star hotel room at a very tempting discounted price), going on holiday as a student is cheap and easy, and is fast becoming part of the University experience, especially considering that students have incredibly long summer holidays that run from June to September!

My girlfriend and I enjoying our holiday in Amsterdam together. 

Even if your friends aren’t organised enough to book a summer excursion, there are still chances to travel as many societies hold their own holidays. For ArtSoc (the University’s Art Society) there was an opportunity to go to Florence over the Easter break, but sadly with a looming Masters project deadline, on top of revision and interviews, I was unable to go. Most sports societies tend to organise competitions or tours abroad too, and if the sun isn’t your thing, the University has a Skiing and Snowboarding Society too!

As a student it can sometimes be hard to find funds for holidays, so there are always alternatives closer to home. At some point over the summer, my friends back home in Surrey want to do a small camping trip, where badly barbecued burgers and haphazard tent erecting is more than enough to have a good time! If you’re in Southampton over the summer, why not explore the New Forest with some friends? It couldn’t be closer!

This summer is my last big break before I start work as a medical physicist in September, so I am allowing myself to enjoy it and take all the opportunities that come my way. My holiday to Amsterdam turned out to be a perfect way to celebrate all the hard work I put in to my degree and I’m now looking forward to graduating in three weeks’ time.

James

Deadline day

Wow, what a week! The first week back at university after any holiday is usually busy, but none have been quite as crammed full as the week just gone. It began with moving back to down to Southampton for the final time, knowing that the next time I pack up my things into the back of a car, it will be my last day in this city that I have learnt to call home.

However, there was very little time to reminisce on my time at Southampton, as I had plenty of other things to be thinking about. The most pertinent of these was the deadline for my Masters project that was rushing towards me. Thankfully, due to the hard work I had put in over Easter, my project was well on the road to being finished before I came back. It only required the completion of the final two chapters, the addition of a few paragraphs here and there and a final read-through.

The final trip down to Southampton 

It’s remarkable to think that at the start of the year I barely knew what an active galactic nuclei (AGN) was and yet, seven months later, I have completed a research project that proposes new ideas for the field of AGN astronomy. There’s a saying in science that the day you submit a scientific paper, you are the world expert in the field you have written about. I certainly wouldn’t call myself an expert yet, but I do feel like I understand this subject more than any other branch of physics I’ve studied (except perhaps for my true passion: medical physics).

After several hours of checking and double-checking my report, to the point where I started to question even the simplest spelling, I finally submitted my project electronically, a day before the deadline. Submitting a piece of work that you’re proud of is always a nice feeling, but this time it was also accompanied with some sadness. This was the last piece of coursework I had to submit and, despite the incredible workload it required, I will miss working on my Masters project.

The deadline came just in time for my birthday! Although my birthday is actually this week, I celebrated it with my university friends at the weekend, because it meant that my sister and some of her friends could join us. After spending the afternoon relaxing at home, we then went clubbing in the evening and had a great time, helped by the fact that there were so many of us!

The next day I then went into the city centre to watch the new Avengers film with my housemates, having been assured that the fact I’ve not seen most of the previous Marvel films (with the exception of the Iron Man trilogy) wouldn’t make a difference. This turned out to be true and the film, combined with our fast food indulgence afterwards, proved to a great birthday outing!

As tempting as it was, I didn’t wear my Iron Man costume to the cinema! 

Now that my Masters project is finished, I can turn my full attention to revision and prepare for the exams that are now less than a month away. This week I also have a Viva (an interview for my project) to look forward to, so although a deadline has passed, I think I will be equally busy in the week ahead – which, to be honest, is just that way I like it!

James

The career pathway

This week the Career and Placements Fair took place in Garden Court on Highfield campus, which is one of the many different career-based activities that the University of Southampton’s Career Destinations puts on. Unfortunately I couldn’t spend much time there, since a double lecture and two hours of project work with my partner coincided with the majority of the fair’s opening time!

Despite this, I have still been thinking a lot about my future after I graduate in the summer. Regular readers will know that my interests lie in the field of Medical Physics, in addition to educational jobs and, of course, writing-based careers! Although I do have a firm direction in mind, it’s always good to still be looking, as there are many different types of jobs that you’re not aware of.
 
I attended another Careers Fair in February, which was aimed purely at Engineering and Computer Science jobs, which of course have a huge overlap with Physics. This is especially true for me because I have taken two computer coding courses and last semester I also took a sustainable energy engineering module. Although a lot of the jobs involved technical computer science knowledge, there were still a good number of businesses on display that both appealed to my interests and aligned with my skill sets. There was even one business that used similar Physics that underlies Medical Physics, but for a completely different use!

The other advantage of a careers fair – the goodies! 

In fact I’ve found this to be true for a number of different industries. In early February, the Physics Society (Physoc) held a talk from a local company called Symetrica, who are an offshoot from the University’s Physics department. They work in the field of radiation detection, producing detectors for ports and other high-security locations that range from small handheld devices to giant portals used for scanning trucks. The interesting part of their work is that these detectors use the same core Physics that a hospital’s PET scanner makes use of!

After the talk, which outlined the Physics principles behind their work and their growth and development since leaving their original home on Highfield campus, attendees were offered the chance to go on a tour of their premises two weeks later. I signed up straight away as I was keen to see more of their work and I was also interested to see what a Physics in industry looks like – I’ve always had images of mad scientists in cluttered warehouses!

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you want to look at it, there were no mad scientists in sight and their workshop areas were meticulously tidy too! The tour took about two hours, during which they showed us their products and production methods, whilst explaining more about the theory behind how the detectors worked. The company was very impressive, but more importantly they showed me that were are many different avenues into careers related to and involving the concepts behind Medical Physics.

Finally, I attended a teacher training course open evening at the University one evening last week. There currently seems to be a giant demand for Physics – and general science - teachers, and after having conversations with some of the University staff and teachers from local schools, this particular career avenue definitely remains an option for me.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve learned that there are so many different careers out there and, more importantly, that there are many different ways of getting into a particular field – something I hadn’t really considered before and something I would definitely recommend investigating yourself when you start looking for you career pathway.

James