School stuff: lab reports and Study Abroad Fair
Door: Samantha de Bruijn
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Samantha
26 November 2010 | Verenigd Koninkrijk, Glasgow
This entry will be dedicated to some school stuff, since making trips is absolutely not the only thing I am doing here, haha.
To start where I kind of stopped two weblog entries ago: the proteins laboratory classes. To celebrate the end of the proteins lab, we had lunch on Thursday 28 (Oct) with the new Biochemistry Society. Apparently there wasn't a society of the Biochemistry study (any more), but some enthusiastic girls from our year decided to set it up(again). We didn't have lunch for too long, because there was enough to do for all of us: we had to make a lab report from the previous lab classes (the ones about killing E.coli bacteria). So although we didn't have much lectures that week, it wasn't really a week were we could just lay back.
That evening I had dinner with the other two Dutch IRUN ambassadors: Marie-Louise and Eveline. We finished the presentation for the 'Study Abroad Fair', had a look at the information the International Office in Nijmegen had sent us and had a nice dinner while chatting about the way we experience our lives in Glasgow now. Fortunately, the International Office had send us lots of flyers and information booklets about the Radboud University and IRUN, so there would be enough to hand out during the fair on November the 4th (I will discuss the fair later on in this entry).
After the usual stress, the three of us finally handed in the lab report on Friday. Mathilde and I also had a tutorial that day. We were told to write an essay about PCR (a method to make a lot of copies of a small piece of DNA, so you can use it for cloning or to determine the sequence of it) and we got it back during the tutorial class. He said we had really done a good job and that the English was also quite good. I didn't know what level of English the university expects of us, so to be honest I was quite proud of myself.
What made me feel even better was when we got back the marks of the two lab reports about a week later. My first lab report (about photospectroscopy) was marked as a B2 and the one about the E.coli as a A3. Now, I understand if this doesn't make any sense to you at all, so I will try to explain it. Although this is quite difficult, because there is no simple converting table. If you get an A, B, C or D as a mark, you have passed it. E and below means that you have failed. A is divided into five parts (A1, A2, A3, A4 and A5) where A1 is the highest mark you can get. A, B, C and D are each divided into three parts (e.g. D1, D2 and D3, where D3 is the lowest mark you can get and still have passed whatever you handed in). All we can do now is guessing, but we think that A3 is about a 9.0-9.5 and a B2 is about a 8.0. So that is really, really good! Mathilde and Leoni also had very good marks and we actually did a better job than some of the Scottish students over here.
Most of the lectures we had in the first few weeks covered the basic information you really need to know, but the latest few weeks we had really interesting lectures. Like in some of the courses we had in the Netherlands, people told us about the research they were doing right now and the methods and materials they use in the laboratory at the moment. It is really exciting to have a little bit of insight in the ongoing research fields. You never know whether you might be a part of it in a few years time. The lectures were mainly about the structure of the cell skeleton. It is amazing to see how, and especially how fast, filaments grow and are broken down in a cell, so that the cell can move and change its direction.
So now, as promised, a bit about the Study Abroad Fair that was held on the 4th of November. Fortunately, I had only one lecture in the morning, so I was able to join Marie-Louise and Eveline at the start of the fair at 12 o'clock. Marie-Louise had brought the information booklets about the Radboud University with her and together with the information booklets about the University of Maastricht and one or two about the University of Utrecht and Groningen that were already at the fair, we had enough to fill the stand.
We soon found out that it wasn't as easy as we had thought it would be. The booklets that came most in handy were the ones that had some information in it about the English courses that the Radboud University offers. Unfortunately, we only had a few of these booklets, so we weren't able to give everyone one. Studying a master's degree in the Netherlands isn't really a problem, but trying to convince people to come to the Netherlands during their bachelor's degree is a lot harder. It has all to do with the language barrier of course. Most studies offer English master's degree, but a lot of the bachelor's courses are still being taught in Dutch. I know that the Science Faculty is undergoing some curriculum changes at the moment and that they are changing some Dutch courses into English courses now, but I wonder if there are enough (interesting) English courses to fill a whole school year with.
Of course you also want to be honest with the people that ask you for information. You don't send them to Nijmegen, if you know they are better off at the Technical University of Eindhoven/Delft/Twente. Unfortunately, like I already wrote, the only leaflets we could hand out were about the Radboud University and the University of Maastricht. To my surprise, somehow Eveline knew a lot of websites of other universities, so when people asked for information, we could at least give them a URL where they could find more information. I didn't find that very satisfactory, but we also gave them our email addresses, so they can always send us an email if they have any questions.
Sometimes I found it very hard to answer the questions they had, because to be honest, I only know some information about the Science Faculty. Fortunately, Marie-Louise is a student at the Law Faculty and Eveline at the Arts Faculty and together we tried to answer the questions the best we could.
Some tips if someone every participates in a Study Abroad Fair: try to gather a lot of information booklets from as many Dutch universities as possible, preferably with the English courses in it and/or bring your laptop, so you can immediately look up the information.
At about 4 p.m. we cleared the stand and it was time to go home and work a little bit more on my Proteins lab report.
Love, Samantha
-------------------------------
Photos: LAYOUT HAS CHANGED!!! MENU IS ON THE RIGHT HANDSIDE NOW. http://s1046.photobucket.com/albums/b465/MathildeCastelijns/
Cell movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHFN48il9YY
IRUN: www.irun.eu
To start where I kind of stopped two weblog entries ago: the proteins laboratory classes. To celebrate the end of the proteins lab, we had lunch on Thursday 28 (Oct) with the new Biochemistry Society. Apparently there wasn't a society of the Biochemistry study (any more), but some enthusiastic girls from our year decided to set it up(again). We didn't have lunch for too long, because there was enough to do for all of us: we had to make a lab report from the previous lab classes (the ones about killing E.coli bacteria). So although we didn't have much lectures that week, it wasn't really a week were we could just lay back.
That evening I had dinner with the other two Dutch IRUN ambassadors: Marie-Louise and Eveline. We finished the presentation for the 'Study Abroad Fair', had a look at the information the International Office in Nijmegen had sent us and had a nice dinner while chatting about the way we experience our lives in Glasgow now. Fortunately, the International Office had send us lots of flyers and information booklets about the Radboud University and IRUN, so there would be enough to hand out during the fair on November the 4th (I will discuss the fair later on in this entry).
After the usual stress, the three of us finally handed in the lab report on Friday. Mathilde and I also had a tutorial that day. We were told to write an essay about PCR (a method to make a lot of copies of a small piece of DNA, so you can use it for cloning or to determine the sequence of it) and we got it back during the tutorial class. He said we had really done a good job and that the English was also quite good. I didn't know what level of English the university expects of us, so to be honest I was quite proud of myself.
What made me feel even better was when we got back the marks of the two lab reports about a week later. My first lab report (about photospectroscopy) was marked as a B2 and the one about the E.coli as a A3. Now, I understand if this doesn't make any sense to you at all, so I will try to explain it. Although this is quite difficult, because there is no simple converting table. If you get an A, B, C or D as a mark, you have passed it. E and below means that you have failed. A is divided into five parts (A1, A2, A3, A4 and A5) where A1 is the highest mark you can get. A, B, C and D are each divided into three parts (e.g. D1, D2 and D3, where D3 is the lowest mark you can get and still have passed whatever you handed in). All we can do now is guessing, but we think that A3 is about a 9.0-9.5 and a B2 is about a 8.0. So that is really, really good! Mathilde and Leoni also had very good marks and we actually did a better job than some of the Scottish students over here.
Most of the lectures we had in the first few weeks covered the basic information you really need to know, but the latest few weeks we had really interesting lectures. Like in some of the courses we had in the Netherlands, people told us about the research they were doing right now and the methods and materials they use in the laboratory at the moment. It is really exciting to have a little bit of insight in the ongoing research fields. You never know whether you might be a part of it in a few years time. The lectures were mainly about the structure of the cell skeleton. It is amazing to see how, and especially how fast, filaments grow and are broken down in a cell, so that the cell can move and change its direction.
So now, as promised, a bit about the Study Abroad Fair that was held on the 4th of November. Fortunately, I had only one lecture in the morning, so I was able to join Marie-Louise and Eveline at the start of the fair at 12 o'clock. Marie-Louise had brought the information booklets about the Radboud University with her and together with the information booklets about the University of Maastricht and one or two about the University of Utrecht and Groningen that were already at the fair, we had enough to fill the stand.
We soon found out that it wasn't as easy as we had thought it would be. The booklets that came most in handy were the ones that had some information in it about the English courses that the Radboud University offers. Unfortunately, we only had a few of these booklets, so we weren't able to give everyone one. Studying a master's degree in the Netherlands isn't really a problem, but trying to convince people to come to the Netherlands during their bachelor's degree is a lot harder. It has all to do with the language barrier of course. Most studies offer English master's degree, but a lot of the bachelor's courses are still being taught in Dutch. I know that the Science Faculty is undergoing some curriculum changes at the moment and that they are changing some Dutch courses into English courses now, but I wonder if there are enough (interesting) English courses to fill a whole school year with.
Of course you also want to be honest with the people that ask you for information. You don't send them to Nijmegen, if you know they are better off at the Technical University of Eindhoven/Delft/Twente. Unfortunately, like I already wrote, the only leaflets we could hand out were about the Radboud University and the University of Maastricht. To my surprise, somehow Eveline knew a lot of websites of other universities, so when people asked for information, we could at least give them a URL where they could find more information. I didn't find that very satisfactory, but we also gave them our email addresses, so they can always send us an email if they have any questions.
Sometimes I found it very hard to answer the questions they had, because to be honest, I only know some information about the Science Faculty. Fortunately, Marie-Louise is a student at the Law Faculty and Eveline at the Arts Faculty and together we tried to answer the questions the best we could.
Some tips if someone every participates in a Study Abroad Fair: try to gather a lot of information booklets from as many Dutch universities as possible, preferably with the English courses in it and/or bring your laptop, so you can immediately look up the information.
At about 4 p.m. we cleared the stand and it was time to go home and work a little bit more on my Proteins lab report.
Love, Samantha
-------------------------------
Photos: LAYOUT HAS CHANGED!!! MENU IS ON THE RIGHT HANDSIDE NOW. http://s1046.photobucket.com/albums/b465/MathildeCastelijns/
Cell movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHFN48il9YY
IRUN: www.irun.eu
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
