The Natural Sciences thread

[Malbecfan]

Inspired by the lovely people on the Oxbridge parents, I thought I would make one solely for NatSci parents.

DD1 studied PhysNatSci at Cambridge, specialising in Materials Science and is now into the 3rd year of a PhD there. DD2 is in her Masters year studying BioNatSci at Leicester.

Feel free to join and share the wonderful and strange world of our fab DC!

Thank you for starting the thread @Malbecfan

DS is in his 4th year of an integrated masters in Natural Sciences (Physics) at Cambridge.

After this he would like to do a PhD if possible.

Thank you @Malbecfan and @Ironoaks . Can’t tell you how much your advice on the oxbridge thread helped with navigating dd’s first term at Cambridge. The freshers week was intense, with double bookings left right and centre, having to reschedule and re reschedule photo slots, tutor meetings etc etc, with email’s flying around causing more confusions. Then that lab schedule clash was really stressful, being under time pressures to settle on a time table within a few days and all the uncertainty…we sorted it with the help of her DoS. Then she noticed bites on her body and panicked that it was the Paris bed bugs….had to call plodge and pest control. Had various ointments delivered by Amazon Prime. Plodge was so great, sorted it all (it was negative on the bed bugs). She’s since seen the college nurse and she thinks it was actually eczema rather than bites…..could have been the stress…who knows, she’s not mentioned it since , so not an issue anymore.

I’ve been really impressed with the college community feel of the place. If she has issues, e.g. noisy neighbours at 2am, she contacts plodge. Any issues that she doesn’t know who to contact she could speak to a real helpful human being at Plodge….and a real human actually answer the phone when you call (so refreshing compared to other academic institutions i ve encountered).

Dd applied to Physical NatSci and Chemistry for her other UCAS choices, knowing how to approach the Personal Statement with these choices was tricky. I remember it being quite the roller coaster of a brutal application process. But thankfully, she somehow landed where she wanted to be. I read with interest the oxbridge application thread this year and can’t believe that was her a year ago.

Despite initial reservations about choosing the Maths B module, she seems to be managing fine, and was over the moon when the supervisor gave her positive feedback when marking her work. Although she sometimes could feel a little intimidated by other very clever, if slightly eccentric characters ( no more so than any other universities I don’t think), someone took year 4 chemistry lecture handout’s to a year 1 lecture….not sure what that was about.

It would be interesting to hear how the fellow Year 2/3/4 Natsci s progress through their journeys C and beyond.

One question though I’ve been wondering about, if she does the MChem, does she get a BA after 3 years and then the master after 4 years?

And do anyone’s else’s DC also suffer occasionally from ‘impostor’s syndrome’?

@Teriyakieverything she would receive both the BA and the MSci (equivalent to MChem) at the end of the 4th year.

@Teriyakieverything I would encourage her to avoid comparing herself with peers; just focus on her own learning and not put too much weight on what others say they are doing.

This term DS needs to study three "major topics" (lecture modules) which will be examined in January. That plus Part III project makes a full timetable, yet a few students choose to study additional major topics, and this happens regularly enough that the department has a rule where they only count (the top) three papers from each student. I'm not knocking this choice for those students who can manage more than a full-time workload, but those (like DS) who can't shouldn't feel inferior or less worthy to be there.

And then a couple of years later, the MA. I think it's not less than 6 years after their first term, so DD1 must be almost eligible as she started there in October 2017. We have a lovely photo of her in her graduation gear carrying 2 framed certificates, one BA, the other MSci. Due to Covid we weren't allowed in the Senate House but her college hosted a live streaming and socially distanced picnic in the college gardens. Maybe if she finishes her PhD we might be able to go...

Goodness me, I didn’t even know studying additional modules was a thing or allowed. How do they find the time? Surely the lectures, labs and supervisions would clash and it’s logistically not possible.

I don’t believe she could fit anymore in, the timetable is very full and then there are the regular weekly supervision work deadlines. Her timetable has an odd fortnightly rhythm, as she has 3 labs one week and 1 lab the next. She could hardly catch her breath in alternate weeks and then decompress a bit in between…in amongst all that she manages to socialise, do sports, cooking and baking, which seems to strike a bit of balance.

@Teriyakieverything I think the first year is the most challenging in terms of fitting everything in because they have the most different modules or pathways to fit in. After that, they can specialise more - I remember DD being delighted when Maths and some sort of computing were finished with.

Your comments about the Plodge are really reassuring. In DD's college they are similarly helpful. When DD was a fresher, our good friends' DD was a final year musician at a central college. We went to an informal event there in 2017 and it was like the Spanish Inquisition trying to get in past the porters. In their defence, they probably have to be firm with lots of tourists, but this was on a cold October night when there weren't many tourists about.

@Malbecfan thank you for starting this thread!
Third year NatSci here, specialising in Earth Sciences. She’s decided to continue on with an integrated Masters, probably in Geophysics or Geochemistry. For the first time she’s mentioned considering a PhD.

Many of DS's peers are planning to go into finance or consultancy, neither of which interest him. He would have been interested in a Physical Sciences graduate jobs / careers fair but the university didn't run one (he tried the Engineering fair and the Life Sciences fair but there wasn't much that was relevant).

Ah, I see from the website that these career fairs have been and gone already in October, when she was 2 weeks into first term and still settling in.

Looking at the themes of the fairs though, my initial thoughts are it’s difficult to see how they map onto the Natsci. Mind you, that could be said of most degrees apart from the vocational ones.

I did engineering myself many years ago, and have gone on to engineering consultancy type work. Many of my peers went onto accountancy, or management consulting, or blue chip companies or other what were big name milk round companies at the time that are no more.

DD and a couple of her friends-one NatSci and one engineer-who all left Cam in 2021 are training to be patent attorneys. It keeps the science but without the research or lab work that she felt she had had enough of at that point.

@Teriyakieverything honestly there is no point going to a careers fair as a fresher. Your DD should be finding her feet, not stressing about something 2 years down the line. I think mine went to one in her 3rd year and had something set up as an internship then Covid came along.

One of DD's friends has gone into science teaching. I think she teaches general science and Chemistry A level - she did Chemistry for 2 years with DD. When DD is home for Christmas I will ask what her course mates are up to now. @ivyleafgeranium our DDs must have been in the same year!

You are right, I agree @Malbecfan , she should just settle in first, starting university is change enough without added pressures. It’s just me being paranoid and not knowing what I don’t know.

@ivyleafgeranium interesting, how did your dd and friend come to decide on patent attorney, or how did they find out it’s even a thing…( I don’t know what it is, or how you would come across it or know about it).

@Teriyakieverything don't stress. It's a massive shock to the system when they enter this strange new world and they speak about things I've never heard of. Mine at least does translate some of the weirder things now so I can work out what she's on about. I remember dropping her back after Christmas in her 1st year and loads of huge young men were greeting her like a long-lost member of the family. When we got up to her room, I asked who they were and it turned out they were all rowers, including the Captain. She idly remarked that she'd been asked to cox the 1st mens 8 in an outing at the end of the previous term - hadn't thought to mention it before!

That reminds me, her college "blade" is lying in 2 pieces on her bedroom floor here. It has the name of all the crew plus the degree they are studying for. It's strange seeing her name with PhD after it when she hasn't finished yet!

@Malbecfan @Teriyakieverything
Yes Malbec she was in your daughter's year. They did materials together. I think we did confirm that they were at different colleges! I have name changed so you probably didn't recognise me. I am not sure how she first found out about the role of patent attorney but she went to a careers fair at some point and talked to recruiters there. She was actually taken on by one of the firms that she talked to. She is enjoying it so far. Fingers crossed.

If any 2nd or 3rd years are interested in an internship in soft materials, applications have just opened for this one: https://www.bioinspired-materials.ch/en/education/summerschool/?fbclid=IwAR2Jqs5t4ZGXQikB_XWGzQ-2tdivI5QMyhgaBirB9QLT3qIQ5HqMYyAUHuM

Ah @ivyleafgeranium I remember you now. Funnily enough, that is the field my DD was interested in and she got to the last 2 when she was interviewed. She wasn't a Bio specialist at the time, although her PhD is Bio based, so someone else got the position. I hope all is going well for your DD.

@Malbecfan yes she is really enjoying it. Lots more exams though to get qualified. She is enjoying working with the companies that are applying for patents- interesting stuff apparently (not that she can talk about it!). She likes the combination of science and business. She is very happy being in the working world so I think she made the right decision not to carry on in academia.

DH and I are attorneys, and definitely found that our classmates with science backgrounds were heavily recruited by the top firms. We assume it’s because most attorneys (including us) studied humanities subjects at university.

@pepperaunt when you say attorneys, do you mean patent ones or lawyers? Sorry for my ignorance - I have had a very long stressful day at school and am being wound up by someone on a thread elsewhere who is posting nonsense. Thank goodness for the sanity and loveliness here!

@Malbecfan all of the offers I knew about were for jobs as patent lawyers. In the US (where we went to school) one must have a science/maths degree in addition to a JD to practice before the patent court.

DS attended an open event today for the scientist training programme with the National School of Healthcare Science. He is thinking of applying to this in parallel with PhD applications. It's competitive (10 applications per place) but so is everything else.

Interesting @Ironoaks . I think the more applications they make (within reason), the better. With my DD2, also a NatSci but Bio and non-C, she is torn between PhD applications and getting a job. She has applied for some of each, although no PhD places have yet come back to her. It is quite early to think about it. Her main criterion is that it has to be funded, so that discounts quite a lot of options. However, there are some good ones on offer. Her current Masters supervisor is keen for her to stay on, but then she would be spending 7+ years at the same place. However, that is exactly what DD1 is doing at C...!

Hi fellow NatSci parents. I hope everyone has been having a good Christmas.

Dd (first year physical) is in a panic as she has only just started working for the mocks she has as soon as she gets back (despite a few gentle reminders over the past month). 🙄

She was in tears yesterday after trying a past paper in Maths and suddenly realising that, while she ‘kind of’ understands how the solutions were reached after looking at the worked answers, she can’t make the leaps in deduction herself now. She’s pretty despondent (ND and a terrible procrastinator at the best of times, but I was impressed by how she just cracked on in first term and worked pretty solidly - albeit at the expense of a social life). Her first term reports were good.

Is there anything she can do at this late stage, with a week to go, to regain her ability to ‘see’ what approach to take with problem, or should she resign herself to messing up her tests horribly? I’m not sure I can take a week of her when she’s in panic/dark mode. Hopefully if she makes it through next term, she won’t make this mistake again. As a humanities person myself, I never did much more than a bit of cramming at the end of the hols, but it’s now clear this approach won’t work for dd!

Thank you for any guidance you can think of! Should she be going back over her lecture notes? Doing the term’s problem sheets again to get back up to speed? Just ploughing on with past papers and hoping it comes back? I’m genuinely rather worried about her state of mind at the moment, as she seems to have decided she’s not worthy of her place now. 😬

TLDR: what can dd feasibly best do to prep for mocks in one week?