Still online…

My initial plan was to return to London in January, since the Covid situation was supposed to be getting better and face-to-face teaching was to be slowly starting up again. Even before Christmas it was, however, clear that that would not be the case. The continuously worsening situation with the coronavirus led UCL to release a statement in December, saying that all teaching would remain online for the remainder of the academic year and that they recommend for students not to return to campus. Us chemists were left with a glimpse of hope, as exceptions were being granted for practical teaching within some courses, but soon even our laboratory classes were cancelled. And that’s how I ended up starting Term 2 from Prague again…

The start of the year was mainly in the spirit of deadlines and labs. Since even labs were to be carried out remotely, we were all curious to see how this will be done. Labs in the third year are already quite complicated and most importantly long and none of us were quite sure how the Department of Chemistry will approach their online replacement. That being said, I have to admit that the online labs were for me personally the most exciting component of remote learning. All was based on the fact that we were provided a series of videos of someone carrying out our experiment and it was then up to us to write up a report as usual. In this way the contents of the lab report were the same as if we had done the experiment ourselves, with the difference being that we were mere observers of someone carrying out the practical work. This solution obviously isn’t ideal, and it cannot in any way truly replace the practical experience one gets from carrying out the experiments, but considering the difficult situation, I believe it was the best possible option. One of our labs was even a project that focused on computational modelling of one of the essential enzymes of the coronavirus using various scientific software. Afterwards, we attempted to design new molecules that could bind to this enzyme, inhibit it and thereby prevent the replication of the virus within the host cells. Even though this work was, of course, completely theoretical, and its real-life use is much more complex, it was still a great insight into how new drugs can be designed. With this, we have finished our first series of labs, with the second one still ahead of us.

All the other deadlines that were upon us were slightly less thrilling. For our degree, Medicinal Chemistry, the third year is packed with different projects. Given that all subjects, and therefore even exams, were to be delivered remotely, many professors have made decisions to incorporate graded projects into their teaching, to reduce the impact of the final exam, the style of which is in many cases still a big unknown. Although this approach sounds reasonable, its application did not go so smoothly. Especially in one subject, we ended up with numerous extremely complicated projects where no one was really sure what was expected of us. In this way we ended up developing new treatment approached for alcohol dependence, Alzheimer’s disease or heart failure, all just in a theoretical way, of course. We also worked on a lot of data analysis, wrote essays and recorded presentations. Although there was a lot to do, it was definitely useful to have an experience with different types of projects, which we wouldn’t get the chance to work on had it not been for this global situation. In the end, we managed to complete all our projects in time and just a few days ago we handed in our last project. At least for a while….

Probably the last important event that transpired during the last few months was the establishment of the new „no-detriment“ policy. Last spring, following the outbreak of the coronavirus, UCL set up a so-called „no-detriment“ policy, which was supposed to ensure that no students would be disadvantaged by the pandemic, which caused very last-minute changes to both teaching and assessment. Last year, this „safety net“ included for example the rule that for that year, only the student’s 90 best credits out of 120 would count towards the final grade. Many students were demanding a no-detriment policy to be set up this year as well, arguing that the quality of teaching was considerably more impacted this year than last year, where there were only a few weeks of term left after the cancellation of face-to-face teaching. UCL ended up declaring the no-detriment policy for this year, but with different rules. One them is for example the lowering of the grade boundaries. As a consequence, one now needs one percent less in order to obtain the highest qualification, the so-called first-class honour. 

And that would be all from me for the time being. The exam period is slowly but steadily approaching and with it the time to hit the books… But more on that next time.