Queen Mary University open day

Hello again,

Today I went to my first University Open Day ever. It's kind of strange to think about it, you know?! It makes everything feel a lot more real and just about to happen. Anyway, it was really good and it made me change my opinion on Queen Mary University, seen that I hadn't taken it much into consideration in the past.

Let's start from the beginning! Queen Mary is not exactly in the very centre of London, but still on the Central Line of the subway so it's rather easy to reach and move around (that is if you know where to look for it, of course). Anyway, we were early out of the hotel this morning, so we went for a wander near the university and I took lots of photos of the streets and the outside of the uni.

Going to the uni

A squirrel in the middle of the road!

The front  of Queen Mary University of London

Mile End Road, where the uni is

We eventually stopped for a coffee at a place we walked past (if only we had been there last night, it would have saved us from all the spices!) and finally made our way to the entrance of the uni around 11.40am. The registration was meant to start 5 minutes later but they checked us in anyway. I got a sticker with my name and a green circle, standing for "Biology group", and then stood aside waiting with mum. In the meantime an Asian girl started talking to us and saying I would have loved Queen Mary by the end of the tour (she is in second year).
After a while, they walked us to a hall where we sat until everybody (around 25 students plus some parents) arrived and the Senior Admission Officer (I think) started introducing the university. He showed us some data about Queen Mary's rankings among UK unis and told us we are some of the ones who have been chosen amongst all the other applicants who were refused and therefore he hopes we will pick Queen Mary as our first choice.
Later on he passed the microphone to the Director of Studies of the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences (Mr Evans), as the Open Day was specifically about this faculty, who related facts about the history of the university, the research carried out at Queen Mary, the Study Abroad possibilities (eg. Australia!!!), etc... All along, both of them were funny and friendly and very down-to-earth so it was impressing, in a good way of course. In the end, the first man who had spoken (can't remember his name!) finished the session with a short introduction to accomodation and possible careers or further study.

After this, we had a lunch break in the back of the room, but I only had some crisps. We were invited to talk to any of the staff members or current students in the room and I had a chat with the responsible for the accomodations, the Career Advisor, that man (yep, always the 'un-named' one) and a student. The first one explained that we are granted a place on campus only of we choose Queen Mary as our firm option, come from further than 1 hour from the uni and we apply for a room before the end of June, but also told me I can't choose a specific house whereas I will have to select five and will be put where they can fit me in. The student and the Career advisor both explained to me what to do if I want to pursue a career in Scientific Journalism: the former said there are specific courses held in the third year (which sounds pretty interesting!) and the latter told me that, while my degree will guarantee for the 'Scientific' part, I should be involved as much as I can in writing activities, such as joining the uni's newspaper and blogging (when I told her I already had a blog she said any topic would be fine, until I have some more Science knowledge to expose, as long as I write in English - which I am trying to do, as you can see). The un-named man just talked about his own experience, as he had started uni wanting to be a Scientific Journalist but had then preferred lab science! They really reassured me about what I want to do, telling me that it is perfectly doable and that it's easier to be a Scientific Journalist with a Science degree than with a Journalism one :)

Around 1.20pm we split up in groups led by a Student Ambassador, in our case a girl named Hannah,  and went for a campus tour. She showed us the various student services (such as the nurse, counsellor, etc...), the gym, different cafés and restaurants, computer labs, the night club, the Biology builiding (where the Bio students spend a lot of their time - it looked great!!), the Chemistry building! It was cool :D Students definitely have no problems in finding food or activities ;)
Lastly, we walked throught the various Houses and another student let us inside a flat shared by 6 people: the common kitchen was small but perfectly usable and it had all that you need, the private bedroom... mmh... a bit small, especially the wardrobe and the washbasin, but nothing terrible ;) It's probably just me used to bigger spaces!
Here you go, some photos of Queen Mary University:

And this is it! At 2pm we were left free and took some time to walk around, before leaving the uni and going back to the hotel to collect our bags to go to Leicester! Tomorrow we will be visiting the University of Leicester, which I really liked from the brochures and the website.

In short, I really changed my mind about Queen Mary and am actually seriously considering the possibility of choosing it as my firm option because of how friendly everybody, staff included, was and how good the university looked and sounded!

Yep, ora ho davvero finito :) Ciao a tutti!!