I love sleeping in. Especially in winter, snuggled up under numerous blankets and duvets in your softest pyjamas listening to the rain and wind attack the windows, knowing it can’t reach your warm haven. Despairingly, this semester does not allow for sleep-ins. While last semester the earliest start was two 11ams a week and then 2 pm the other three days, this semester, we Biomedical engineering kids are stumbling into lecture theatres and tutorials at 8 am, 9 am, and 10 am every day.
I am filled with dread every time I am reminded that I stupidly decided to arrange for my Enggen 204 tutorial at 8 am every Monday. This communication and group work focused paper that forces you to be the most social is way more challenging when you’ve been up since 6 am after a big weekend. Usually, I would be well rested after the holidays, but I did the compulsory machinery course at MIT in the last week, which required us to be in Manukau by 8 am for a full day of standing, sawing, and welding. Keep an eye on your emails over the summer to avoid a nasty surprise email requesting your attendance in MIT in a weeks’ time.
Despite the early mornings, this semester is much more engaging. After sharing most of our classes last semester with the Engineering Science kids (I know, it surprised me too), we’ve finally left them behind doing their crazy maths and have two classes with just the BME kids. The multiple labs a week are very interactive and hands-on; it feels like we’re proper engineers now (but still closely following every instruction and asking a lot of questions). The small class size and team involvement in the labs means everyone is getting to know each other better, whether that’s by passing yawns around on those early mornings or choruses of tummies gurgling around lunchtime and then stuffing those tummies between lectures. Finding the familiar faces from the field trip is much easier in a class of 30 than 100, and it makes the learning way more engaging than last year when the lecturer is literally a metre in front of you.
I’m excited to spend the semester getting closer with our cohort while learning about the body and mathematically modelling enzyme activity. The early mornings will continue to be a struggle (lots of early nights are in order!), but everything we’re learning is well worth it. In the next few posts, I’ll go through the papers we do in a bit more detail. So as famous lyrical genius Kylie Jenner once sang: rise and shine.
Extra for Experts
A bit about me:
- I have never gotten a speeding ticket before
- I sleep free falling style
- It takes me approximately 38 minutes to get out of bed in the morning (I’m working on it)
- If I was stuck on a desert island I would take my bed, my dog and a box of Odd Company’s.
- My favourite way to “study” is to have Netflix playing in the corner of my screen
- I couldn’t choose between medicine and engineering when leaving highschool before deciding I wanted to actually enjoy my first year so chose the best of both worlds – Biomedical Engineering