What to expect on breaks

I just thought I would clarify something before reading this post. I’ve so far got all A’s for my work and 1 B. But I’m only talking about my experience on breaks and workload. 

When at university, it’s somewhat like school. You get term breaks (example - Christmas and Easter) I think the first year I generally didn’t study that hard during my breaks. The second year was a little more hard-core and involved a bit more studying even during weekends and term breaks. But now in my third year, I don’t get “traditional” breaks. I’m a lucky guy in the fact that I really do enjoy what I do. So I don’t mind working 8 hours straight modelling a character, I almost find doing the practical side of things as the actual break for me. I find that my final year project takes most of my time. Mostly researching or writing the paper itself. Although, one thing I tend to do is game. Usually a few hours at night on Skype with friends. Even then, we often talk about either what we are working on, or upcoming assignments. For example one of my assignments this year is a group assignment with quite a few of my friends. Because we all play the same game, we can just count playing the game almost as a casual group meeting. We can come up with quite a lot of ideas just by being on Skype for a few hours.

On the other hand, the break between years is huge. I would recommend finding a small job, if not at least working on your portfolio in whatever course you’re studying. It’s quite unnatural to have so much time off after you’ve been working every day for the previous 5-6months. I can't say I got a job during this time and I regret it.

One last note, RIP sleeping pattern. Especially in my field, a lot of people game during night hours. Plus if I have an assignment I tend to stay up all night working on it. Within no time I’ve screwed my sleeping pattern and end up sleeping at 7am. This can’t be any truer during term breaks. I have time to lie in, so it piles up rather fast. But not to worry, I think being a university student teaches you to work/wake up with little sleep every now and then. Generally, 1 early wake up fixes this. So it’s usually back to normal in no time!

Extracurricular Activities!

At the University of Bedfordshire, there’s a huge amount of groups and societies to join. Some of them aren’t even course/ subject area specific. As I’ve mentioned in my last blog post. I travel to university, so sadly I don’t actually personally attend any society. But, luckily because I’m studying a computer science related subject there are some societies that the university hold in which you can attend online. For example there was a CGI society run a few years ago. You could enter the weekly challenges on Facebook. Another great example of this is games jam. This may not be a weekly thing, but every year or so the university hold a games jam. I think we still hold the Guinness book of records at the university for the biggest games jam.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19622596

Link is above, if you wanted more information. I know the university is holding another games jam soon. It’s something which will obviously help your CV, build your technical and your social skills. They are not compulsory but I personally think they are great fun and another example of how the university goes the extra mile! Although I think personally as a student you should try and attend as many things like this as possible. I’ve currently attended 5 game jams, a few only 12 hours others 48 hours.

Travel to university?

My university traveling experience and if it is actually a good idea.

Well firstly, I wouldn’t recommend going to a university just because it is local. That’s not the best idea. But if they have a perfect course and degree field, then why not. It’s actually what happened to me. I live around a 20 minute drive from the University of Bedfordshire. But there can be a huge amount of issues with public transport. That is the only issue. It takes over an hour for me to get to university while on the coach. But it takes about 30min talking to the bus station itself. So overall is a tedious and expensive thing to do daily. There obviously is perks to living at home. But if you are like me, your parents will still ask for rent. This means you probably are almost better off living at campus. The only reason I decided to stay at home was because first year, I was only going in 2 – 3 days a week. This is mostly because I could fit all of my lectures for the week into those days. This means that traveling isn’t really that expensive in the long run. But! As I’ve said, public transport can be extremely late as well as just an overall bad experience.

Uni traveling experiences

•                 People being sick all over buses (Yes, when the bus did turn, it would spread all around the bus) Really discussing, but obviously couldn’t have been prevented from that guy.

•                 People seem to be ill and travel all the time. I would have about half of the people are either coughing, sneezing or sniffing from a runny nose. I’m not really a germaphobe but even I used to carry hand sanitizer every time I used the bus.

•                 Driver rage – I’ve seen my bus driver spit at other people... Swear, smoke and even eat while driving. Some of those are even illegal, but when it happens on an almost daily bases, there’s not point complaining to the company. Nothing will be done and the last thing you want to do is annoy the a driver you see on a weekly bases.

•                 The correct change or else you can’t get on – Price changing weekly because student discount fluctuates as well as the education of the driver. Some are unaware of student discounts so you basically have to bring a pocket full of change to even confirm a seat.

Now I actually use a coach rather than the bus. It’s a little longer to get into university, but they run all day and night. Plus they are much more hygienic and comfortable for just a few extra pounds a month. There are cameras on-board and GPS. Makes it much easier to track and makes it a much more professional environment. Oh and free wifi.  

I’ve probably got paragraphs of bad experiences and the occasional good experience while traveling to university. But the overall outcome is that you waste a huge amount of time travelling, but everything is on time, then actually traveling is a nice time to brainstorm and have a bit of time to yourself to think about things which is something you don’t often get to do when leading a busy life.

None of these transports are affiliated with the university, it's just public transport. Pretty much similar where ever you travel if you use them often enough

My experience on the department

This blog post is basically an overview of the computer science department from how I’ve experienced it so far. Because I’m a third year student, I’ve had 2 full years of the university. There are a lot of positive points about the university. I firstly think that almost all of the lecturers and professors are friendly. Even the demonstrators are friendly and will help out where ever they can. Basically if anyone needs help on any topic in the computer science field, there generally is someone who is willing to help you, even this is out of “learning hours”. I’m not saying that 11PM on deadline day that they will help. But if you approach most of them with problems you are having and show that you’ve actually been working on a certain project/topic. From my experience they will help. Not that I’ve emailed a lot for help, but I know there are some cases with deadline dates and what is actually due.

There is always a machine to work on. Even if that means going to the LRC and working on some written work, you generally can get a machine with specific hardware/software you need on a daily basis. I know that I can get access to 3Ds max which is specialist 3D software almost whenever I want. I can’t obviously talk for other departments in the Computer Science field, but from my first year experience, I know that networking departments seem often free for those who don’t have their own machine with expensive hardware and software on. Because not all students can afford to buy the hardware needed.

A good example of that is today, we had a quick demo of the motion capture room. If a student books in advance, they can get access to this kit. This is a very cool thing for students like me, knowing that they can get access to very expensive kit which wouldn’t be possible while being at home.

I don’t have experience at other universities so I can’t really compare. But from what I have experience at the university of Bedfordshire, it is a very up to date university with kit almost always available.