Best parts of life as a Physics student

Life as a Physics student is full of a lot of things. Lectures, weekly assignments and coding, labs and a lot more. Having just finished my first year of university, I can say there are so many great things that come with being a Physics student. Here are some of my favourites:

Our weekly tutorials with an academic

These are weekly sessions where you’ll meet with an academic and 2-3 of your peers and discuss a range of topics. Sometimes you might talk about the weekly problems, upcoming exams, or your tutors area of research, but a lot of the time my tutorial group spent our time discussing our week and future aspirations. Having that designated time to go over what’s happened recently really helped me because university brings big changes in a person's life, so stopping every once in a while to see how much has happened is really helpful. And if your designated academic is involved in some experiments, you might even get to tour their labs in this time and get extra insight into leading research or even what your life might look like after your degree.

Bridge pizza

This happens about once a term where the Physics department invites lecturers and students to the Physics Bridge just to relax and eat pizza. The Bridge is a study space in the Poynting Physics Building where they often hold events like games night or interest based mini lectures. Bridge pizza a great opportunity to chill out with course mates and get to know some of your lecturers. For example, this year both our Maths 1A and Quantum 1 lectures decided to sit with me and my friends for a bit and it was really fun to be able to talk to them in a less lecture setting.

Physics Ball

This is by far my favourite event of the year! In collaboration with student societies, the Physics department have their annual Physics Ball attended by a lot of students and staff (people who don’t do Physics can also come along) and it’s a chance to dress up and have fun with people in different years doing Physics and commemorate the year. And the after party (which this year was at Circo) is definitely not to be slept on.

Taking on a degree like this comes with a lot of work, so being able to find the time to let loose and reconnect with yourself is really important and luckily there are a lot of outlets for that at UoB. Currently being stuck in exam season is making me miss the things above, but I know that in a week's time there will be more fun events to celebrate the end of the year!