Student experience

The 2pm to 3pm psychology research toolkit lecture helps us to more efficiently learn the skills we need for our degree. Today we covered how to write about research papers in essays which is proving very useful for assignments. The 4th and final contact hour for this Tuesday was the 4th session of the 5-week psychological research Bootcamp which is a series of 5 seminars that have been helping us to get used to thinking critically about research. It’s also important to note that lectures actually end approximately 10 minutes before the hour so a one-hour lecture would actually be about 50 minutes to ensure everyone can travel and prepare for any following sessions. After walking back to George Eliot, I had dinner before heading back to the Windsor building for a session at 6:30 with the first aid society which is lots of fun and a nice way to wind down after a longer day.

Wednesday afternoons are left free for societies and sports etc but today I spent the afternoon organising my lecture notes and doing some further reading before walking into Egham Highstreet to grab some groceries from Tesco. I also had a job interview and enjoyed some domino’s pizza for dinner. I then spent the evening making sure I saved the lecture slides for the 2 lectures I have tomorrow. These are uploaded to Moodle (our virtual leaning site) 24 hours before the lecture. Moodle as been very useful in organising resources and it has lots of information about the courses and assignments. We also have lecture capture which means our lectures are recorded and uploaded to Moodle so that we can rewatch anything we want to be reminded of for example.

Anyways I hope this is giving you a good insight into being a psychology student here. I’m having so much fun within my subject and outside of classes and everyone has been very easy to talk to both students and staff. See you tomorrow for Thursday’s entry!

I then went back across campus for my next lecture and a great thing about having a smaller campus is that any required journey will rarely take longer than 7 minutes! This meant I was able to get to my next two-hour lecture which was on lifespan and development with plenty of time to spare. In this module, we have been learning about sensory development of infants and childhood social development for example. Sometimes 2-hour lectures can feel a little long, but the lecturers here do a great job at breaking up the dialogue with some videos to show real life examples and research that reinforces what they have been telling us. This lecture finished at 4 so I took time to go over the slides and further reading before dinner. For the evening I took my guide dog, Lucy (@lucy.the.guide.dog on insta), out for a free run in Founder’s meadow. It’s brilliant having her with me and lots of people enjoy seeing her on campus.

If you take away anything from my posts, I hope it’s that Royal Holloway is a wonderful place to live and learn. I’m making wonderful friends and having lots of great opportunities both within my course and outside of it. Psychology here in particular is a brilliant course and the academics, and all staff here are very helpful. The pace and content really accommodate for all students and there is so much support and further learning available.

Good luck for the year and I hope to see as many of you as possible in the next year! I’ll be the one with the guide dog so feel free to come say hi. 

After our lectures, we always get the opportunity to apply our knowledge to short quizzes and worksheets. I am so glad that if we have any questions about the lecture, the lecturers and teaching assistants are happy to answer my queries in workshops and drop-ins!

Today was relatively relaxing day for me, so after my workshop, my friend and I decided to have lunch together at the Boilerhouse Café, which is one of the most popular coffee spots on campus, and had a study session in the library together. I’ve always found it useful to be in the library with one other friend, since it motivates me to do some work and keeping me from procrastinating!

After a long day on campus, I made myself some leftover pizza (it doesn’t sound too appetising, but having leftovers is part of the student life!), watched "Friends" on Netflix with my housemates, whilst finishing on some lecture notes for tomorrow’s lecture 😊

Anyways, after my lecture, I went to Boilerhouse Café again (it’s my second home if you can’t already tell), and had a lovely time catching up with my good friend Kharesma 😊 Afterwards, I met up with two of my coursemates to discuss our proposal for an upcoming lab report. In my first year, all the lab reports we had to do were relatively simple, because the data has been collected for us, all we had to do was write up the actual report. In our second year, lab reports require more of a team effort, where a group of us will come up with two detailed proposals, then pick one that we think has a better design, collect data, and write up lab reports individually. Sounds complicated? I know. But not to worry, our lecturers provide a lot of guidance to make sure we know what we’re doing, so you’ll be ok!

Afterwards, I hung out with my really good friends Jemima and Izzy, and then had a simple dinner. Welcome to uni life – busy yet fulfilling! I am sat in the library as I am writing this, I am hoping to get some work done before my lectures on Thursday and Friday. 

Speaking about last year, I thought I’d clear up some of the misconceptions that people might have towards the first year of university. I’m sure a lot of you have already heard that all the coursework/assessments don’t count towards your final degree, and some people might think, ‘well surely I don’t have to put in a lot of effort then!’. Well as idyllic as that sounds, first year is still hard work. The Psychology courses at Royal Holloway are really good in that they lay a foundation for every student, whether you’ve studied Psychology before or not. In other words, first year is the year to make mistakes and figure out which subject area you’re interested in!

So, back to what I’ve been up to today. I’m fortunate enough to be part of the best society on campus (I’m very much biased) – the Royal Holloway Christian Union, and so I’m constantly helping out with events that we put on. For example, today, we have the first of two short lunchtime talks about Christianity and science. It was amazing to see so many non-Christians there! This is only one of the many things that the university offers: whether that is sports clubs, societies, fun and quirky events like pet therapy, there’s always something to do on campus!

I’m very much ready for some sleep now, tomorrow’s going to be a busy day!

This afternoon, the Christian Union put on a lunch bar (similar to what we had yesterday, and our regular weekly meetings, which meant that my day has been really busy but fulfilling. I’ll be honest with you, the reality of being a university student isn’t always rainbows and butterflies; there are times when I just cannot motivate myself to get work done – and today was one of those days. It is important to remember that it’s okay, because everyone else is in the same boat. It is all about the balance (as have mentioned previously), and enjoying the university life as well as getting a good grade for your degree.

Study week is quite similar to half term, but rather than jetting off on holiday, it is designed for students to have some time to rest, and to catch up on some reading. We are lucky enough to have study week, I know there are some subjects (which have less readings) don’t have study week! I am excited to spend the weekend in London and Cambridge to catch up with some friends! I have timetabled myself for the rest of the week for some work, as well as some rest!

Seeing it’s the last day of the diaries, I thought I’d address the most important question you might want to ask if you’re looking at study at Royal Holloway – “out of all the universities, why Royal Holloway?”. The answer is simple, because the Psychology course is great and on top of that, I am able to enjoy the full university experience whilst not feeling too overwhelmed.

Thank you for reading my diary entries this week, I hope it has given you a glimpse into what university life is like 😊

After this little treat I made myself some coffee and headed to the library to work on my dissertation. The dissertation is an optional extended essay where students can explore any topic of interest that isn't covered in the course. I've chosen to look into the Free-Energy Principle, which tries to explain how we perceive sensory signals from the external world and from within our own bodies. Today I worked on making a summary of the principle based on the papers I've been reading.

I've now finished the first draft of the summary - which isn't up to scratch yet, but I'll come back to it a few more times to edit and refine what I've got.

I'm about to head back to my flat for dinner, after which I’ll catch up with friends over a drink (and celebrate that essay submission one more time!)

As I mentioned in my last post, I only have one lecture a week, which means I have to organise my own schedule. This is both a blessing and a curse as it gives you the freedom to work when you feel most productive but it also means you have to resist the temptation to procrastinate. To help with this, I plan my day the night before and keep my phone out of sight for a few hours every day, which was today’s tactic.

After lunch I worked on my final year project, which is an experiment that tests whether the way we process visual information is linked to how well we do on visual reasoning tasks. As I had just received feedback on the draft project report, I planned how I would make the required changes over the next week. I started today by editing my introduction until 4:30 p.m., after which I needed a break from my room! So I walked to Founder’s pond, which has just been beautifully restored and is a great place for collecting thoughts and resting my eyes after hours of staring at a computer screen. Feeling refreshed, I got back to my flat at 5:30 p.m. and planned the tasks I’d tackle tomorrow based on how urgent each task is. I’ve now had my dinner and am ending the day in the best way possible – with a cup of tea and my guilty pleasure – an episode of EastEnders!

Testing ended at 4:45 p.m. so I made my way home to have a little break and then worked on my project draft again. I’m now off to make myself some dinner and read a few chapters of ‘The Amber Spyglass’ by Philip Pullman.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my week, where I balance coursework with my job as a research assistant and the odd lecture! I am so happy I was asked to contribute. Studying at Royal Holloway has allowed me to develop my intellectual and practical skill set, be part of a great community and to find a really supportive group of friends, so I’m glad I got to share this with you.