Student Life so Far
Looking back to October 1st when I arrived in Southampton a nervous ‘fresher’ already seems a life time ago, as so much has happened in such a short space of time, however I shall try my best to provide a brief summary.
After arriving at halls and being left by a hysterical mother and rather happy looking father, we were allowed a few days to settle in and teach ourselves some essential skills, like how to use a washing machine, before starting our course. In these days I managed to go to university trials for the cricket team, who train at the Rose Bowl (Home of Hampshire C.C), as well as attending the fresher fair, an event where the university clubs (including skydiving and extreme ironing!) try to persuade you to join.
After settling in, my course in Civil Engineering began. In our first week, designed as a taster, we built various scaffolding structures to cross imaginary ‘mine fields’, electric fences and rivers, learnt about health and safety (especially when another groups structure collapsed leaving them all rather bruised) and made bridges out of spaghetti, capable of holding 10kg of weight.
Unfortunately after this the real work started! In my first term I took four modules Construction, Design and Materials, Hydraulics, Maths and Mechanics. Of these modules, Hydraulics (the study of anything related to water such as pressures, flow and power generation) was the most interesting, as we got to test our maths by conducting various experiments in the labs. At first the workload no more than a thirty five hour week but as the course progressed it increased up to the point before exams where I was working twelve hour days, seven days a week. However having just completed my last exam I am now enjoying a well earned week off before starting term two where I will study Engineering Science, Structures, Architecture and Geology. The idea is that after the first year we will have a basic skill set from which they will be able to teach us how to design and build a variety of constructions.
I would like to thank the Ashcombe Dorkinians for the Bursary, so far I have spent it on buying my course books (nearly £200!) and I will be spending the rest on a five day constructionarium, an event in which teams build scale replicas of iconic structures out of scaffolding and are then judged by professional engineering firms.
