Stresses of university

People get stressed in different situations, stress itself isn't actually that bad. University can be very stressful. I thought I’d share an issue I had in my second year. It started out with me becoming very anxious and nervous about even getting the bus/coach to uni, then it turned to headaches and migraines. Not just a “Take a painkiller” type of migraine, I’m on about 3 days solid while taking strongest painkillers for migraines on prescription. It affected my studies hugely. I thought it was the stress of uni that was causing me to get migraines and the fact that I was getting migraines was causing stress. Vicious circle, I even opted to get counselling at the university which helped greatly.

I personally thought it was very strange of me to be getting these symptoms, considering my grades. I didn't feel like the coursework was an issue, but somehow almost 24/7 I wanted to be in a dark room/sleeping because of the migraines. Luckily, I know what the issue is now. It was actually allergies and intolerance's which was causing these migraines. It was still an eye opener, getting these types of symptoms while studying is a huge handicap. It was one of my biggest life lessons, I couldn't physically work because of this, and so whenever I felt better I would try and get some work done. I still do this now, whenever I have some free time, I generally get some work done. It’s helped my grades and my overall attitude.

Now I’m generally fine, I just avoid certain foods. Might financially cost me a bit more, but it’s a huge improvement than it was last year. I personally don’t mind talking about this, it sounded silly once I knew it was food related. Either way, something like this can make you want to leave university. I thought it was educational stress causing the issues. I’m not looking for sympathy, I managed to get all A’s still.  I think if you manage your time well, these literally nothing to worry about. Plus, you should enjoy your course and what you do! University should be some of the best years of your life ;) 

My course

In the last week, I’ve found out that my course won’t actually exist at the university next year, people can’t actually apply for computer animation. I have mixed emotions about this, I know the computer science field is rapidly changing, so is field of computer animation. I was a little sad that the course wasn’t continuing at the University of Bedfordshire same with Graphics design. All of these courses have been merged into the Games Development course. From my personal opinion computer animation is not games development. For people like me, I prefer “rendered” animating and using software like 3Ds max and creating shorts. 

So if I had to decide on universities again at this stage, I wouldn’t pick this university for that reason. Same with those studying games development, they probably don’t want more graphics/animation merged into their course. I’m only expressing my opinion here, I just don’t think that it’s a good idea for them to be merging. Another thing is my exact course got renamed in my second year from Computer Animation to Computer Animation Technology. We could definitely see that changes where happening in the course. 

I’m nearing the end of the third year now, I’ve had a good experience with the course so far, shame that others won’t be able to experience it too. It’s a growing field, there are plenty of things I can do with my degree and the animation master program is still running at the university, so it hasn’t limited me in any way. 

This whole blog is based on computer science I know, but my course is computer animation and I just wanted to express what I thought on the topic. The other courses like networking and forensic sciences seem unchanged, but I’ve haven’t had any real experience studying in those areas (well, briefly in year 1). What I think we can conclude from this is that technology is always going to be growing and changing, departments grow and change in areas too. It’s always going to be difficult for institutes to keep up-to-date on all the new technologies and indeed even new courses. For example 3D printing wasn’t a huge thing 10 year ago, but now you can cheaply buy a printer for your home.

3D printing stand I manned in the o2 arena for Microsoft

It’s debatable weather or not these types of technology should be extracurricular at this stage in its development. Either way, I’ve tried to keep up to date and you can find more info about the image above on my personal blog…

http://it-ca.net/blogsean/?p=826

 

Finance for sofware?

I wrote about Dreamspark Premium a few months back on this blog, I thought I would go along the same topic and reassure some students about software and access to software. Especially in the computer science field, software is key. Just being a student will give you access to Autodesk software and it basically has no limitations. At the University of Bedfordshire we have Dreamspark Premium so students have access to a lot of industry standard software for free. So you can install Windows 8, Office 2007, Visual studio and even Microsoft Expression Studio all free! There’s a huge amount of Autodesk software free for students. I know personally for me, it was a worry because the cost of software these days can be more than the course you’re paying for. 

Student discounts are always great, a lot of companies have some type of educational or student discount these days. Even if they don’t, I personally don’t hesitate contacting them. Being a student, you need to be doing a lot of work at home, not only should you be doing units but keep up to date. Going to events, attending societies and basically everything you can to keep active.  Something I personally have benefited from is a company called Novedge. They have free webinars where you can actually watch lecturers from industry experts on different technical fields. Not only can you watch, but if you attend it live you’ll be able to ask them questions. There’s literally software and tools announced in the webinars, it’s a great place just to watch and understand new software. 

I thought this would be a great help for students who were worrying about finances and software. Plus obviously if you just attend university you get access to a huge amount of databases full of Books, journals and articles on almost every topic. Even if there isn’t you may be able to get the library to invest in the book if they think it’s relevant to your field or others will benefit with the purchase.

Here are some links that I talk about:

https://www.dreamspark.com/Account/signIn.aspx

http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software

 http://www.novedge.com/webinarseries/default.asp

Plus my last post about Dreamspark is here…
http://bedscomputing.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/dreamspark-premium.html