Student Spotlight: Looking back on my time at UCL
9 September 2024
As I travelled up to London to attend my graduation ceremony on Wednesday 4th, September, I looked back on my last three years at UCL and the many opportunities it brought me.
Moving away from home as a very shy person to study in a very busy city like London shocked many of my friends and family; however, being able to study at one of the best universities in the country was an opportunity that I wasn’t going to pass up. Studying in London gave me the push to meet new people and expand my horizons. As a result of this, my experience at UCL has given me the confidence to grow and become comfortable to express myself.
One of the many highlights of my studies at UCL was the scenario weeks that I undertook. Scenario weeks are intensive week-long projects aimed at solving a problem within our field of engineering. This helped me to improve my team working skills and forced me to communicate as an introverted pupil. At the end of each scenario week, we would be tasked with presenting our device or plan. As a pupil in secondary school, presenting to a room of people was my worst nightmare. I would fumble my words and shake like a leaf. The scenario weeks gave me the confidence to speak in public and provide details on decisions I’ve made during the project. By the end of my final scenario, I had given presentations to my peers, discussed design plans with a client, gave a speech to industry experts and answered questions on my project.
As a student at UCL, I was a member of the UCL Students’ Union. I found a community in the UCL Welsh Society and am happy to say that I was on the committee for three years and, notably, the President in the final year of my undergraduate degree. I also had the opportunity to undertake a charity trek to the Colombian Lost City for the Meningitis Research Foundation through Choose a Challenge. Travelling to Colombia was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I trekked for 5 days meeting local people and learning about the culture within the Tayrona area.
I also had the opportunity to undertake lab research through my third-year research project. I always enjoyed my lab projects in school, so taking part in research in a professional lab setting was exciting but very daunting. My project was entitled “Modelling Conditions related to Chronic Kidney Disease to Analyse Calcification of Bioprosthetic Heart Valves” where I used simulated body fluid to model the blood of patients with conditions related to chronic kidney disease to determine whether these conditions had an effect on the rate of calcification on bovine pericardium used in bioprosthetic heart valves. This project, with the help of my supervisors, gave me the confidence to produce a successful project. The best opportunity to come out of my third-year project is the fact I have been given an unconditional offer to study an MPhil/PhD course in Medical Physics and Bioengineering. My academic journey at UCL continues this October!
Written by Ffion Parry, Biomedical Engineering Graduate
Images supplied by Ffion Parry