Well, it’s official. After months of agonizing over plans for my immediate future, the upcoming academic year, I have managed to narrow down the field of possibility to just three choices. Over the course of the past week, I’ve managed to visit all of the contenders and speak to some faculty and students at those various programs, as well as submitted the relevant applications. I haven’t yet decided on a particular course yet, and probably won’t until the last minute. As often is the case, I’m telling myself that there’s really no reason to set my hearts on a particular program, when at any moment I might be rejected, making my decision far easier. We’ll see if this line of logic turns out to hold any more veracity this time than in the past several times I’ve tried applying it.

Imperial College London

As some of you might know, the funding scheme I’m on both permits and obliges at least 2 years of graduate study in the U.K. For my first year, which you’ll know if you’ve been keeping up with my blog, I chose to read for an MRes in Biomedical Physical Chemistry at Imperial College. Additionally, it happens that I almost certainly have funding if I choose to continue on for a PhD at Imperial, likely in bioengineering, so there’s option 1.

Pros/Cons: I definitely like and enjoy the environs (I do so love some of the friends I’ve made here!), and thus far have gotten on well with my supervisors. The bioengineering department is arguably the best in Europe, and the research I’m doing combines to some extent my love of mathematics with applications to biochemistry. Additionally, from speaking to Kristy, a current Bioeng PhD student from Texas, I’m told there’s a “geek cachet” to being from Imperial. Whereas students might be perceived as choosing a school like Cambridge or Harvard for name recognition, coming from Imperial signals that one is extraordinarily serious about the science itself. The flip side to this of course is that because Imperial holds less recognition outside of the academy in America, it won’t help as much should I choose to pursue a non-academic career in the States. However, I’d be out with a PhD at 23 years old, which has its own associated advantages.

Imperial College Pavillion

University of Warwick

Options 2 takes me back to the world of straight mathematics. Earlier today, I visited the University of Warwick (where my friend Michelle went for undergrad), located near Coventry in the Midlands. Warwick has one of the best maths departments in the U.K., despite its relative youth (it’s only about a half century old), and is also a true campus university, like IU Bloomington, and in contrast to Imperial or Cambridge (option 3). Thus, yesterday, I submitted my application for their MSc in Mathematics, and was told today by the MSc director that I should here back in about a month, and that based on my college GPA, he would find it unlikely (though not impossible) for me to be rejected.

Pros/Cons: The campus really is beautiful and reminds me very much of Bloomington. The MSc is comparatively small and offers a lot of personal attention, also requiring students to do supervised research projects. Warwick is also obviously a non-Oxbridge/London institution, and so is a bit less inundated by foreigners (though still so, and the maths department especially); it’s also a bit off the beaten path for Marshall Scholars, which holds both it’s appeals and drawbacks. There is one compelling reason not to choose the Warwick MSc over the Cambridge part III course though: the MSc director told me so, saying quite bluntly that while Warwick is a close second, the Cambridge part III course is better.

The buildings are obviously quite new at the University of Warwick.

University of Cambridge

Which brings us to option 3, which is part III of the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge. Despite the anachronistic name, part III is the “equivalent of a very hard taught masters” in mathematics, and is quite international reputed. The maths department claims to be the oldest maths department(s) in the English speaking world, and with that age comes great bureaucracy, as was obvious from the even just the application procedure. The application form was 32 pages long (including instructions), and three copies were required, one for the central office, one for the department, and one for the “college”, each of which technically needs to approve of me, though the major decision will be made for the two maths departments. I visited on Friday, in the lovely rain so characteristic of England.

Pros/Cons: Cambridge obviously has the benefit of a strong reputation nearly everywhere and in most fields. Because of the reputation, it’s also harder to get in, and the part III course is much larger than Warwick’s MSc, consisting of nearly 200 students from around the world. Thus, one receives far less personal attention, and the competition can also be quite fierce for the limited number of PhD places offered, which tend to be given based on the exam results from part III. On a more visceral note, the place is also beautiful, though in a very different way than Warwick. While there isn’t as much green space, the architecture is truly astounding in some of the older Cambridge colleges. There’s also a mix of the really old gothic style with some more modernist buildings like the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, where I’d be based.

Cambridge Centre for Mathematical Sciences

So there you have it, the three options I’ll possibly have to choose from for next year. A lot will depend on how well my research at Imperial goes, and on whether my applications for Warwick and Cambridge are successful, so it’ll be a while before I know for certain. Still, at least I can take comfort in knowing that even after I’ve chosen, I’ll continue to have the opportunity of agonizing over my long-term future plans!

~William~

Though the bulk of the degree is research—as befits an MRes (Master of Research)—there was still a taught component, and this past week final exams marked the end of the assessed classes. I should first state the caveat that I should not generalize too much from this one experience taking English final exams, but having said that, I will now proceed and do exactly that.

Over the course of 7 weeks, we had 7 taught modules of about 8-10 hours of lecture each. The lectures themselves were quite interesting, and covered a wide range of topics, though not in very much depth given the time constraints. Each module was taught by 2-3 lecturers in sequence on related topics; for instance, in a biophysical techniques module, one lecturer spent 4 hours on NMR and another 4 hours on X-ray diffraction. The final exams were given by module, with 30 minutes being allocated for each, though in a fuzzy way—we had 2 hours last Tuesday for 4 modules worth of questions and 1.5 hours yesterday for the other 3 modules. For each module, we had a choice between two multi-part essay questions, usually one set by each lecturer of a module, though in the modules with 3 lecturers, we still only had two choices. Each subquestion would be worth some fraction of the total points for that module, and whether or not we passed the exams as a whole depended on a simple summation of the points we earned from all modules. The passmark for us is 50%, and more points are need to get merit (60%) or distinction (70%). For any American readers, I should remark that it is supposedly far more difficult to get 100% here than in the U.S., but will have to wait until I get my own results back before commenting on the grading scale.

As for the questions, I must say that I am in a way quite disappointed with the level of difficulty. Perhaps it’s because I’ve already taken full semester classes in biochemistry, genetics, etc., so I have an unfair advantage over chemistry/physics/electrical engineering graduates who haven’t taken any biology since A-levels. However, it felt like even for the subjects I hadn’t previously had, the level of the questions was only about that of CHEM-S117 (honors general chemistry) at IU, which I took when I was a fresher way back when. I suppose the grading might be extremely harsh, but I’d be hard pressed to figure out how they’d pull that off given the questions set.

Of course, this is a postgraduate course, and the primary purpose of the lectures was to give physical science graduates a crash-course in biology so that they’ll have some inkling of the why behind their research projects for the next 3 years and 9 months (or only 9 months, for the few of us overseas students who are on the 1-year MRes instead of the 1+3 MRes + PhD). Indeed, one of the lecturers (my supervisor, actually) explicitly stated that her question would be easy because the thrust of the program is the research component. The course directors themselves stated that it was largely due to University of London regulations that the exams took the form they did, and that they were looking into changing them now that Imperial has unaffiliated. Still, I had assumed classes and exams would get significantly harder upon going to grad school, which turns out not to be the case. Oh well, at least the research component is considerably more challenging and exciting.

I should now state that a decent number of the British students also felt somewhat disappointed by the exams. Hence, it might just be the postgraduate philosophy of this particular program to place little emphasis on taught material that’s behind how easy it was, and not British higher education in general. Still, this experience stands in marked contrast to the perception of some a few Imperial students, who have argued to me before that the coursework is harder and more in depth than at most American universities, due to the specialization inherent in British higher education and the better secondary school education (the A-levels every university-bound student take correspond roughly to American AP classes content-wise).

I’ll be following up this post when I get my exam results back, to compare and contrast the grading system. It’s also possible I’ll have to eat my words if I end up miserably failing, but I’ll deal with that then. In any event, I’ll be beginning my research project on Monday, so wish me luck!! ::squeals of excitement::

~William~

As is obvious from the timestamps of previous posts, I have been more or less out of commission for over a month. This was largely due to a sudden rush of activities/deadlines in the last couple of weeks of term. In order of decreasing time required, they were as follows:

• Literature Report: This was the only real assignment we had all term, and boy did it gobble up time. For about three weeks, my life, day in, day out, was spent reading papers about protein dynamics and mathematical models, summarizing key points, and then stringing them together in a semi-coherent fashion. Luckily, much of it will be reusable in writing up my eventual thesis, so I should have an easier time when it comes to that 80-page behemoth.
• Dance: While I have so far managed to keep myself from becoming over-involved in too many extracurriculars, what I lack in raw numbers I’ve certainly made up for in time per activity. Somehow, in addition to taking the beginner tap, advanced tap, beginner ballet, and contemporary classes, I managed to make it onto the beginner ballet, beginner tap, and jazz competition teams! And as absolutely bloody amazing as it’s all been and certainly will be, rehearsals have taken up a significant chunk of my evenings. I must say though, that I’m now more physically in shape than I’ve been since captaining the varsity boys swim team back in high school!
• Choir: Any weekday evenings in the last couple of weeks of term that weren’t used up by dance were probably spent singing. Not only did we have the regular concerts for both main choir and chamber choir, but there always has to be carolling during Christmas season too ^_^. Besides, since we almost always go out for drinks afterwards, the actual amount of time spent nearly doubles. On a sidenote, one Thursday evening after carolling, I came to the shocking realization that I was the oldest of a group of four of us (but by only two days); I’m pretty certain this has never happened to me, ever.
• Dinners: not the ordinary kind of course, but the celebratory or formal ones. Goodenough had a faculty dinner for the sciences, which was my first black tie event (i.e. “tuxedo” in American), and I also went to several Christmas meals. Additionally, the American Thanksgiving also came around, and almost all of my fellow Marshalls and I traveled to Oxford for a nice potluck supper, complete with turkey. Between all of these meals, I’m sort of surprised I haven’t gained any weight!

And there you have it: my whirlwind of a life in the final couple of weeks before term’s end. On a slower note, the past week or so has been considerably less exciting, involving mostly me sitting in my room reading mathematics, but it’s been a nice break from the frenetic energy of the recent past. The New Year’s coming up, which should be exciting, and I’ve managed to have a major epiphany about my future ambitions, just in time for the new decade ^_^. More on that later though.

Anyways, hope everyone’s had a Happy Christmas and will be having a Merry New Year!

~William~

Remember, remember the fifth of November / gunpowder, treason, and plot / I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

The British tradition of Guy Fawkes Night is definitely a sight to see, if ever anyone is in the United Kingdom in early November. I unfortunately missed the celebrations on the fifth of November due to a choir rehearsal, but luckily, there were a number of events for the following Saturday.

For those of us unfamiliar with English history, Guy Fawkes was a Catholic conspirator who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605, but was stopped on the 5th of November, leading to the aforementioned celebration. (If anyone saw V for Vendetta, the film makes quite a few references to Guy Fawkes, not the least of which is V wearing a Guy Fawkes mask everywhere). The celebration thus begins with the “burning of the Guy”, which quickly becomes a roaring bonfire.

Bonfire at Battersea Park

Afterwards, a fireworks display normally ensues. As it happened, Battersea Park put on a half-hour synchronized fireworks/music show, which was really quite amazing. I’m not entirely sure exactly why this tradition started, as there don’t seem to be quite as direct a connection to the gunpowder treason plot–maybe the fireworks symbolize the gunpowder that didn’t go off? However, I was more than willing to partake of the performance, and take my fair share of photos and videos (unfortunately, the sound overwhelmed my phone’s microphone, so the videos didn’t turn out that well).

Battersea Fireworks

Finally, once all was said and done, my compatriots and I dispersed along with the rest of the crowd, but left along a different route than we followed coming, happening across the Albert Bridge, quite a sight at night. We ended up going for crepes in South Kensington before calling it a (thoroughly enjoyable and tiring) night.

Albert Bridge

Academic classes (finally) begin tomorrow, so I thought in my last hurrah I’d list out a couple of random notes, which may or may not later be turned into full fledged blog entries:

• Academic pedigree. I’ve always loved Google, and if it weren’t for the fact that my career interests don’t mesh, I would’ve loved one day to work for them. When I mentioned this this other day, one of my friends mentioned that I now have the “pedigree” to go work for them, referring both to Imperial, which is significantly higher ranked than IU in most publications, and to the Marshall Scholarship. Of course, people from IU do go work for companies like Google, as evinced by internships friends of mine have received, but at the same time, it’s also true that Google and a number of other companies selectively recruit and target graduates of name-brand institutions and recipients of particular awards (I was recently invited to “spend a day with Google in London”).

  Names of other people and places with whom I’m now associated are opening doors, and I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about that. For some nebulous reason, the whole idea of being pedigree’d just doesn’t sit well with me. Perhaps it’s just a subconscious manifestation of the very American obsession with the “underdog”, or maybe Hoosier pride showing through for my alma mater, but it’ll definitely take some time for me to get used to the fact that I’m now at a “prestigious” institution. I suppose there’s nothing to do for now but take up Google on their offer of lunch.

• Anonymity. On the other hand, whatever pixie dust that may have been sprinkled upon me by the powers that be seems to go unseen here, for which I am incredibly grateful. I won’t lie and say I didn’t enjoy some of the attention I received at IU last year, but it’s really nice to be returning to near complete obscurity. I’m now just another postgraduate student, with coursework, research, and the odd extracurricular. In some ways, I’m even less noticeable than when I started at IU, as most postgraduates are supported by studentships, so the only two distinguishing factors I now possess are my age and citizenship. Should be a fun year !
• Greater London. The London tube (underground/subway) system is divided into zones, based on proximity to the city centre. Goodenough College (where I’m living) and Imperial (where I’m studying) are both in zone 1, as well as pretty much every major historical and tourist attraction. In the few times I’ve ventured out of zone 1, I’ve been struck by how essentially different the bulk of Greater London is from my usual stomping grounds. I suppose it’s probably this way for many large cities, but when I got out of the tube station at Fulham Broadway, I could’ve sworn I was in some other city centre. Where I come from, a small town in southern Indiana, everyone who lived there basically lived in the same place. I really do wonder how alike the lives of any two “Londoners” can be assumed to be when the surroundings vary so drastically over the distance of but a few miles.
• Dance classes. Earlier today, I went to the ICU dance company call-out, where I attended the beginning tap (I’ll probably actually be trying out advanced tap next week), beginning ballet, and contemporary sessions. As is often times the case in dance classes, girls greatly outnumbered guys; this I had expected. However, I had also thought that due to the uneven guy-girl ratio of almost 2:1 at Imperial College, it wouldn’t be quite as uneven as I’m used to. Was that an inaccurate assumption! There were only 2 guys (including me) in the contemp class of at least ~50, and the tap and ballet classes were just the slightest bit more even. In the various dance courses I took at IU, the ratios were never more unbalanced than 10 to 1, and in my summer ballet class it was actually even 2:1, with four girls and two guys. I sort of wonder whether this anomaly is due to the culture of Imperial as a math/science school, whereas IU had strong humanities and performing arts departments, or if there’s some other reason.

  As an aside, I should also mention that this problem seems also to be the case (source: Michelle) in the ballroom dance club, where it’s more of an issue. Gender imbalance, while an interesting anomaly in tap/ballet/modern, is naturally of greater importance in partner dances.

• Musical theatre. One of the advantages (for me) of attending a geek school is that the competition in the performance arts is not nearly as intimidating. This of course isn’t to say that Imperial doesn’t have strong performers, but in general, the calibre isn’t quite as high, simply because nearly everyone who attends is focusing on “Science, Technology, and Medicine” (or business, recently). As such, I decided to join the Musical Theatre Society, and’ll probably be playing a chorus part in their Fresher’s Revue, which is pretty much open to anyone. I did audition earlier today for a solo, but I don’t expect much, since I’m an absolutely terrible solo singer. It was good practice though, and besides, rejection in moderate quantities is in my mind one of the most important things that can happen to a person. Not only does it very obviously point out areas of potential improvement, but it also helps immensely in keeping one humble. I’d be delighted if I get a solo, but really, I’m just happy to be singing anything.

Well, that’s it for this rather random and unstructured blog entry. Wish me luck for classes!

~William~

Sincere apologies for the incoherent, rambling nature of this blog post, which I fully recognize. However, if I were to take the time to fully revise it, I’d get severely behind on blogging, and probably wouldn’t catch up for weeks, so here it is, in all it’s gory unintelligibility. Please do not read if you would like to maintain any respect at all for my command of the English language.

Wow! These last several two weeks have just blurred past, and it defies me meagre capabilities as a writer to fully express the whirlwind that’s been the Marshall Scholars orientation and then settling in to Goodenough College in London. But as is the case with all good bloggers, here’s my ultimately futile attempt:

I arrived in Washington D.C. on Sunday, September 13 for an orientation program put on by the British Council for. For the next three days, the lot of us were whisked around from meetings to minglings, and everything in between. Following, we took a group flight on Virgin Atlantic (with a couple of minor luggage debacles) to London, and had another two days of the same. Unfortunately, despite the many interesting speakers, due to the Chatham House Rule, I am unable to really say much beyond that about them.

However, what I can comment on are my fellow Scholars, without whom the entire experience wouldn’t have been nearly so enjoyable. Naturally, everyone was uniformly “intellectually distinguished” in their respective fields, but much more importantly than that, it appears the selection committee was quite good at picking out really interesting and affable people. Though their biographies on the website were in most cases rather intimidating, in person they were, well, personable. Of course, the five days of forced interaction certainly helped in getting to know people

In any event, for about a week now I’ve now been living at Goodenough College, a charitable trust postgraduate residence hall in London. Classes don’t start at Imperial for another 1.5 weeks, and I’m not allowed into the labs without safety training (also in 1.5 weeks), so that means I’ve had a lot of time on my hands, which I’ve mostly spent exploring London. My feet aren’t particularly happy about it, but walking probably close to 50km since Monday has really helped me get a sense of the city (check out my facebook photos), though I expect that even after spending the year here, they’ll still be places I won’t have ventured. It’s definitely a change from good ol’ Southern Indiana. Well, that’s about it for now; wish me luck!

~William~