Filip Polák

Spring is slowly coming, and with it an unexpected crisis. Pandemic. As the number of cases infected with the covid-19 virus gradually increased and various countries began to apply security measures such as quarantine or border closures, the United Kingdom has long refused to react in any way.

The summer holidays are over, and the academic year begins anew. This time however, it being the final year, the amount of expected work and time put into the university is immensely larger than any of the previous years. One’s sanity is often challenged whilst learning advanced techniques for a variety of different programming languages, various ins and outs of a number of operating systems, distinct techniques of real-time rendering for computer graphics and more, all the while desperately trying to find relevant sources for one’s dissertation paper while also writing it at the same time.

The academic year is over and the last term of my second year if officially done. After finishing all of the university projects and writing my one exam the only thing left to do was patiently await the results that would hopefully confirm the continuation of mu studies. The results at last came in on 13th June, bringing the feeling of satisfaction and victory.

Back from Christmas and the second term begins… One of the university projects that I am currently working on is a yearlong game development group project where me and a group of five other students, along with our lecturer, are trying to simulate the actual work environment of a proper game development company. Specifically, that involves meeting our lecturer at least once every week where we discuss the progress that we have made during the past week, as well as all the issues and problems we might have with said project. Another reason why I have mentioned simulating an actual work environment is the fact that our work groups were decided by the lecturer himself as to demonstrate that in a professional environment you wouldn’t be able to just choose your friends into your work group and you would have to work with somebody who you (potentially) can’t stand, but you would still have to be professional around them… And to be honest here, I have got to say that our project is not coming along quite well – we do have a bit of communication issues within our group, which is definitely not ideal (lots of times someone adds or changes something within the project without letting anyone else know which just adds to the confusion and frustration of other members of the group).

The beginning of September came around and I am finally moving out of university halls and moving into my new house where I'll be staying for the rest of the academic year. So far, it's just me here as the rest of my housemates (who are also all international) are still away from Britain.