International Students Blog – Physics

Since the spring holidays just ended last week, this is usually the time of the year when everyone (or at least me) realizes how many activities and fun things they still wanted to do before summer and how little time they have left thanks to upcoming exams in May.

While I have resigned myself to hoping for dry weather and lots of barbecues this year, there are actually many more things to do, not least many events offered by the university and the student union (most of which run throughout the whole year, so you don’t have to wait until Easter to get involved).  The student union (for everyone who is as lost as I was in the beginning) is an association of students who represent Strathclyde’s student body when dealing with university or more general education issues and organize events, clubs and societies (for more detail: http://www.strathstudents.com/). Furthermore, the building where the student union has their offices is called student union as well and at least for Strathclyde University it also includes several bars, cafés and multi-purpose rooms distributed over 8 floors.

So, anyway, the student union – besides offering cheap drinks – organizes and subsidises a lot of sports clubs and societies. The latter are almost free, as far as I know, and there are nearly a hundred different societies, ranging from charity and fundraising clubs to politically engaged groups and societies for students of certain subjects (such as the physics society). There are also societies for people from certain countries to meet fellow countrymen and –women which might be especially helpful in learning to find one’s way around after arriving in a new uni environment.

As for the sports clubs, they are a bit more expensive, as you have to become a member of the sports union (about £22 per year, I think) and usually pay for facilities or any extra equipment, depending on the sport. But again the range is pretty wide. While I’m not a big sports fan and have only tried one or two of the sports offered, you can basically find clubs for any common sport as well as martial arts and several outdoor activities, such as sailing, mountaineering and skydiving (see http://www.sportsunion.co.uk/).

The fun thing is that you can try as many clubs as you want in Freshers’ Week (first week before start of lectures in September) and even if it turns out you’re not a total sports enthusiast, most clubs include a lot of social events and nights out.

Finally, there are many events organized for international students, especially by the International Society (surprisingly) (also see http://www.strathstudents.com/international). They run trips to other places in Scotland, movie nights, pub crawls, etc. One weekly highlight is the international pub night where tens to hundreds (depending on the season) of international students meet at a different pub every week. The pubs are chosen by the organisers and usually include pretty nice places in the city centre, so there’s a good chance you’re going to find your new favourite pub on one of these nights. But, of course, it’s also a great opportunity to get to know new people and a few of my “non-international” friends liked it so much, they also started going there regularly.

Another great place to meet international students is the international café organised by the Christian Union (CU) which is actually where I met many friends from my first year.  Every Thursday evening you can get a warm meal for £2 at the chaplaincy centre (on campus) together with other internationals and members of the CU. As the name suggests, it is mainly an event for international students and everybody is welcome to join, no matter which religious views you might or might not have.

Finally, the chaplaincy centre itself, together with an organisation called Glasgow Internationals (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Glasgow-Internationals/55844921694), is quite active as well when it comes to events for international students. In my first two years here, I participated in several of their hiking daytrips and Scottish cooking lessons.

While all of these international events are great to get to know people at the beginning of the year as well as to get opportunities for travelling around in Scotland, unfortunately, most “non-international” students (those considered as home students by the university, e.g. Scottish, English, Northern Irish) don’t know about them and so you’ll really just meet other foreign students there.

As a small addition, I found the following quite interesting website, while roaming the internet for some useful links: http://www.friendsinternational.org.uk/. The tips and pieces of advice it gives on living and studying in the UK might be especially helpful for anyone from a non-European country.

Having shown my desire to have an international experience, I was offered the opportunity to do a summer project at Capital Normal University in Beijing, China. This has the benefit for the University of increasing its international awareness and of course means I get the unique experience of performing a physics project in an intriguing country.

This has been set -up by a few members of staff in the physics department, in that they found a Chinese university to host me and the department will partly fund the experience. Fortunately I have been told living expenses are not much in China compared to Glasgow! The exact details are still to be confirmed but it looks like I shall be performing experiments with microwaves with a member of staff who has previously spent a year living in Glasgow (which should help with any communication problems due to my accent!)

In preparation so far I have had to fill out an application for Capital Normal University, attaching copies of my passport, official transcript and the signature of the head of the physics department who will act as my financial guarantor for the trip in the unlikely event of something going wrong. CNU will provide student accommodation and help applying for a VISA should I need one.

As I am sure is understandable I am very excited but also a little nervous as I don’t know what differences to expect in day to day life in China such as the food there, the attitudes to western culture and the fact that I currently do not speak a word of Chinese! On the other hand, I am very excited about all the new people I will meet and places I will see and look forward to being out of my comfort zone for a while. The experience will give me the chance to find out if I might enjoy performing international research as a future career and will enhance my job prospects no matter what position I am applying for.

As I pretty much left out any details on the University of Strathclyde or my degree course in my last post, it is probably now time to catch up with that and mention a bit about the physics department and the different study options (for which there is also lots of information on the physics department website which you probably came across on your way to this blog).

In general, there are two types of degrees one can receive: a 4-year bachelor honours and a 5-year integrated master’s degree. While the former has different possibilities of specializing either on physics with teaching, physics and maths or just physics, the latter follows the same structure as the physics bachelor honours, but involves two years, instead of one, for specializing and gaining research experience through projects. I am currently in the master degree programme, as I am planning to continue with a PhD and go into research, but the degree system is pretty flexible and one can switch between degrees up to the beginning of 4^th year.

At least during the first three years, teaching is structured relatively similar to school with most subjects being compulsory and only a few classes to choose in the form of electives in first year and as extra credits in second and third year. I chose introductory astronomy and a course on flight and space flight engineering as electives in my first year, but there is a wide range of possible classes from languages, history and psychology to science courses with tempting names like “Everything you ever wanted to know about physics, but were too afraid to ask”. Compulsory courses, on the other hand, comprise the most important areas of physics, e.g. mechanics, optics, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, solid state physics and computational physics, as well as the necessary maths whereas many classes are part of the curriculum every year but deal with increasingly difficult and complex aspects of the subject.

In 4^th and possibly 5^th year (depending if you go for bachelor honours or master), from what I have heard and seen, most of the curriculum is free to choose from a set of subject areas, whereas one of the only compulsory parts in both years is a research project which you work on in both semesters. Obviously the choice of topic is not totally free, as there are about 80 other people also wanting to choose, but the physics department has a broad range of research focuses, especially in photonics, plasma physics and quantum information, so there are many possibilities in both theoretical and experimental physics (let’s hope my words will still turn out to be true when it comes to me choosing a project…).

Most courses involve exams at the end of each semester (January and May), but also class tests or assignments during the semester which count towards the final mark. During the first two years, there is also the option that one can be exempted from exams if the class test or assignment marks are good enough, with which you can help yourself to incredibly long summer holidays (amazing 5 months!).

Especially first year is rather easy for anyone who has done advanced highers or any equivalent advanced courses in physics, and there is the possibility to enter straight into second year. I personally decided to start in first year which gave me time to get used to the whole new university environment and also to learn and talk about the course material in English.

One of the most important aspects of the physics course, which I haven’t mentioned yet, is labs. From first year on all physics bachelor and master students have to do a few hours of laboratory work per week whereas the format varies from year to year. While in first year we were doing pretty easy experiments, such as determining the viscosity of a fluid and finding the speed of waves on a guitar string, in small groups for 3 hours per week, in third year we have 8 hours per week to perform about four to six experiments in a year, alone or with a partner, from a whole selection of experiments, e.g. analysing gamma rays from different radioactive samples or generating and examining the second harmonic of laser light of a certain frequency from nonlinear optical effects (which basically means fun with lasers). Although I’m not the greatest of experimentalists and unfortunately all experiments also involve writing reports in which you summarize your results, I have quite enjoyed lab classes, especially in third year, as many of the experiments are actually tasks that one could be doing as part of “real” research work.

For exchange students who only stay for one semester or one year the whole system of course choices, etc. as mentioned before is usually less restricted (or maybe more, but from their home university) since they do not have to follow any curriculum requirements, but can choose from all courses from 1^st to 5^th year (again following the restrictions from their home university). From the physics Erasmus students I have met so far, most were in third year, but found that they could take fourth and fifth year courses without having difficulties with the course material.

In any case, there are really nice and helpful people in the physics department that can assist with any sorts of problems (visa problems, course problems, other preferably uni-related problems), so there is nothing to really worry about.

One of the first questions I usually get asked when meeting new people is why I decided to come to Glasgow for studying. And for anyone who has been here for a while and seen the weather this might actually be a fair question.

For me it has been quite an easy decision as I came here with my boyfriend and, out of the five universities that we were allowed to apply for, Strathclyde was the only one that offered both of us a place. All this sounds rather boring, though, and is, of course, not the whole story, I usually skip that part and go straight to the unspeakably breath-taking Scottish landscape, the top-notch teaching and research facilities at Strathclyde, the indescribable beauty of Glasgow and, of course, the indeed surprisingly low costs for studying abroad all of which convinced me to spend five years of my life here.

To be fair, there is not much of a breath-taking landscape in Glasgow. But once you get out of the city, there are a lot of great things to see from the famous Loch Lomond – not more than an hour away – to the Scottish highlands, lowlands and isles most of which can be reached within 4 hours. The prospect of being able to visit at least some of these places – along with haggis, bagpipes and men in kilts – was what sparked my interest to choose Scotland as a place to study.

Two more important factors were that Scotland is mostly English-speaking (other languages spoken at times are Scots, Glaswegian, Gaelic or any other local dialect), so that I’d be able to actually understand what I was going to study, and that I would not have to pay any tuition fees. The latter point is, I think, quite unique to Scotland. Unlike in England, Wales or Ireland, the Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS), a government organisation, in most cases pays the tuition fees for Scottish as well as non-British EU students. While this is rather unfortunate for non-Scottish British students, I personally am very thankful for these regulations as it allows me to study abroad for about the same costs that I would have studying in Germany.

Finally, Glasgow is, despite its reputation as an industrial city, really beautiful with a huge park in the middle of the city and historic buildings distributed all over the centre. For students it is a paradise since there are several gigs and hundreds of pubs you can choose from every night (actually, according to www.myglasgow.org there are exactly 812 (!) pubs and bars in and around Glasgow). And many of them along with shops and restaurants even want to give you student discount!

So what’s still keeping you…?

Hello,

I’m a third year Physics student who has been asked to write about my experience of participating in the study abroad programme. I began making inquiries regarding a year studying in Canada in my second year and after speaking with Dr. Papoff who was in charge of international exchanges within the department, I attended an international lunch where I had the chance to meet some previous students who had done an exchange and some students currently visiting strathclyde. The students were enthusiastic so I decided to go for it.

The application involved getting the appropriate forms from the international office, getting a reference from one of my lecturers, and choosing my possible classes at the Canadian Universities. Although a perfect match of classes wasn’t possible, it was simple enough to choose close enough classes and infact meant I could customize my studies a little more than I would have otherwise studying here! After getting my forms signed off by Dr. Papoff I handed in my application, all I can do now is await the decisions of universities…

- Calum

I’m a physics undergraduate student at the University of Strathclyde, currently in my third out of five years of study. I came to Glasgow in 2009 from my hometown in Germany and have been enjoying Scottish student life ever since.

In this blog, I want to write a bit about my experiences here as an international student, but also about life in Glasgow and studying at Strathclyde University in general. Especially for anyone who is considering coming here to study I hope I’ll be able to provide a bit of useful information.