First week as a 3rd yr University student

Yeeehaaa I survived my first week back at university as a third year student! Yea!!!!!!!!!

On Monday I had a genetics lecture from 2-3pm. My first lecture at 300-level! I was so nervous on Monday morning! What will it be like??? Would I understand anything??? Just the thought of it being 300 level biology (not 100, not 200 level but 300 level!!) made me so nervous! …But it actually turned out to be ok! Our class was so tiny! Last year in genetics we had approximately 200 students! This year we have about 30!!! It felt strange being in an almost empty lecture theatre since it was one of the large ones MC101. I remembered this was where I had my first ever lecture in 1^st year –for chemistry, and at that time it was jam packed with students! We started talking about diploids and also got an assignment!

On Tuesday I had my 100-level media studies lecture from 2-4pm. What a contrast! The lecture theatre was jam packed!! About 500 students! And everyone was so noisy! (in bio we sat in dead silence) It was funny hearing the lecturer go on about stuff like ‘Welcome to the university. This will probably be the first lecture you will experience as a university student and I hope you enjoy it…etc.’ Felt a bit awkward being a 3^rd year student in a 100-level class. But it was quite a fun lecture- we watched movie clips! It’s indeed very different to biology so it will be a nice contrast for this trimester. The only downside is that we have a compulsory tutorial once a week and I do not like non science tutorials!! I think they’re a bit pointless… but they make tutorials compulsory in non science subjects so grrr you have to go whether you like it or not.

On Wednesday I had my first ever two hour lecture for biology- genetics. Brain fry time!!! The lecture seemed to go on forever. It was very interesting, but I was just not used to sitting in a lecture for that long and by the end I was seeing stars! Ok the day before I had media for 2 hours but we just watched movie clips, so it didn’t actually feel that long then. Oh well, I’ll have to get used to two hour genetics lectures every Wednesday. Besides, genetics is fascinating!

On Thursday….da da dadum!!!! My glorious weekly 6 hour molecular biology lab!! Ok I though my brain was fried on Wednesday…that was nothing!!! By the end of the lab you could say my brain was an omelet! We were assigned lab partners and our first experiment involved carrying out electrophoresis. On this particular day I was most grateful for the fact that chemicals can take a long time to react! We set up our experiment and left it running for 2.5 hours- and had a lunch break!!!! I can’t remember the last time I ever had a lunch break at university…I think it was way back in 1^st semester of first year!!! Felt great to have a lunch break…but I had no idea what to do with my self! I’m just so used to running around from one class to the other… The final hours of the lab seemed to go on forever! Then I came home and began writing my lab report.

On Friday I had one final lecture from 2-3pm for genetics. And that was it for the week. So basically I have one class every day of the week. Although traveling in to university for 1 hour can be a pain at least I don’t have any gigantic gaps between lectures like I could have had genetics at 9am and then media at 5pm! That would have been the worst case scenario for timetables! When I don’t have classes I stay at home and study and do assignments etc. Wow I still can’t believe my first week of being a 3^rd year uni student is over already! …Now I will spend the weekend writing up my lab report, studying genetics and completing a genetics assignment… I banned myself from the internet except for once a week (to update blog etc) or if I need it for assignments. Wahhhh so not used to not going online! Stayed up till midnight last night making cue cards for genetics…

University life as a 3^rd year student has officially begun again!