The First Week
The first week at Imperial College has been largely festive. Various welcome sessions were arranged to acclimatise the students with the structure, functioning, services, facilities and administration of Imperial. Something amusingly strange about Imperial College is its name! In fact, it’s a university but they still call it college. The word ‘college’ is embedded in its name. However saying Imperial is more than enough for the purpose of recognition.
Coming back to the events in the first week, the first welcome session I attended was for the International students where the rector (SIR Roy Anderson) spoke to the students together with other representatives of different departments of Imperial including the International Office. The next welcome session was for all the postgraduate freshers in engineering and physical sciences courses, where more or less, same group of people spoke with special emphasis on the changes to expect as a postgraduate student and the expectations of Imperial from us. The Imperial College Union (ICU) President also spoke on both of these occasions and highlighted how the union (run by students for students) helps the students all along. Another welcome session that I attended was by the department for all the MSc students and the final event was speicifically for my course. So in a way they addressed the whole group first, then the department took over and then the specific course. Attendance of a mandatory safety induction programme (boring, to say the least) then allowed us to pick up our cards which is to be used at the ubiquitious card readers at the campus. The card is used in printers, scanners, copiers, library doors, gym doors, praryer room doors, department doors, and what not!
The limelight of the first week throughout Imperial was the events organized by the ICU. At this stage it is important to mention that ICU gets the largest funding in the UK for any student body. It has over 300 clubs and societies! You can find everything you can imagine (YES!) and even those that you can’t. The Union runs shops, cafes and pubs as well. The main event was the freshers’ fair. They also arranged various parties every night during the first week none of which did I attend.
Realizing that there was nothing much to do in the first week I took the opportunity to register myself with the local GP at the Imperial College Health Center. I also applied for the opening of a bank account which I heard is a pain in the ass in UK. Natwest Bank didn’t bother me much, but they did say it takes a week for the opening of account. I guess I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed.
I’ve been overwhelmed by the sort of facilities available at the campus. The central library which remains open 24 hours is awesome. It has multiple floors (levels), a big cafe, group study areas, silent study areas, etc etc. and its beautiful too. It houses books for the NHS and some museums too. Then there is a departmental library in our EEE department building which houses very specific titled. A special MSc room which is quite large is the place where most of the MSc students from all three MSc programmes meet up quite often. Its a study room as well as a leisure room. It has lockers for us and computers with ultra high speed internet. Wireless access is everywhere. The room has armchairs and tables as well and a microwave oven as well. One day it smelt badly of fish! (arghhh). This particular room is usually locked with a digital code.
Other facilities within the department building include a cafeteria below. Eating isn’t a problem. There is a main dining hall and other very large common rooms too. These places do serve Halal food as well.
I’ll be covering the stuff in greater detail as time permits, and try to add pictures as well. There’s a lot more I wish I could key in now but I’m just unable to formulate proper sentences these days out of sheer tiredness.
Note: Although I wrote this post a while ago, I wasn’t able to post it up due to some odd reason. I’m almost at the end of week two which has been very interesting, so I’ll write about it over the weekend, hopefully.
9 comments
are you studying there now? visit?
Ah
i love London
OK!!! how do i get into Imperial???
WOW!!! in that description there was nothing to remind me of PNEC except for the word college.
That place sounds good i wish it serves u well too. Have a nice year
thats all so nostalgic for me!
and add pictures too
@UTP: study man!
@Tazeen: it sure is great!
@Talha: u knw the answer
@Awais: sounds good? maybe i described it badly because its not good, its awesome!
@karachiwali: pictures…i always end up thinking what to snap
there’s so much that can be captured
PNECians ke liye to Govt. colleges bhi jannat hain…
Imperial sounds cool!
everything and anything! i wouldnt be interested in places like the london eye or madam tussauds but basically just about anything to do with your college and all.
@ anas: Do I? Really?