Emotions and moments How does a first year biomedical student at UCL feel?

While sitting on the plane, you are awaiting a new beginning, a total change in your life. You are aware of the fact that you are leaving everything behind, risking all you can by taking this new uneasy path. Fear is causing your body to shiver, but yet the darkness in front of you is more tempting and you are longing to be engulfed. The restlessness has taken over your body and simultaneously you cannot make yourself stop shaking from this strange feeling.

After that, panic arises. Thousands of questions come to your mind and you cannot help yourself from asking: Will I have any friends? Will I like my school? The large, unpacked luggage lies on the floor in the middle of a new, white, empty room and your subconscious makes you believe you are more stupid and less competent than anybody else and that the admission office must have made a mistake. You suddenly start to doubt your subject choice  and starving to death and clothes shrinking become a real fear.

The following emotion is one of pure excitement. As soon as you step into your first lectures and understand how many extraordinary opportunities University College London offers, you understand how lucky and privileged you are to be studying at this unique school where a lot of the most important scientists of the modern age were working or studying - as we are now. Most of the rooms at UCL are named after the renowned alumni, therefore at 9 am your biology lecture may take place at J.Z. Young’s, then chemistry at Christopher Ingold’s and later in the evening a physics class at Chadwick’s.

From day one, all students get a very warm welcome and realise that it is more than easy to make new friends if they join one of the societies offered by UCL, as they can find people with the same interests. Thanks to the wide range of societies, on Monday you find yourself going to a café to discuss a lecture on alternative medicine or the use of wi-fi signals to treat limbs paralysation, then on Tuesday you join the expressionism trip to Royal Academy of Arts with the Art society and on Wednesday you do a yoga and a modern dance class.

Unfortunately stress and doubts come next. You cannot finish you assignments on time, have too much homework and mid-term exams are crawling near. After drinking an extensive amount of long black coffee and many sleepless nights later, exam period is finally over and everything gets back to normal.

However, the crucial moment is the one when you are on your way home from a lab, permanently thinking about the results and you start singing from the excitement. You realise that you have just spent 5 hours (which seemed like 5 minutes) observing the contraction of Guinea pig’s ileum in different drugs’ solutions and that you actually are curious to know if atropine is a reversible antagonist for acetylcholine receptors or not. At that moment, still feeling the adrenaline and endorphine rush, you come into a realisation that you are at the right place doing the right thing and that you are not struggling anymore with the new environment, and that all your fears and anxieties are gone. Suddenly, you feel accepted and do not wish to think of a different life.

…Or is this only how I feel? This is how I have been feeling during my first two months at university.

Thank you Kellner family foundation or making this unique journey possible for me.

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