Telling people I study Human Biology is usually accompanied with a scrunched up nose and a comment of ‘wow that’s brave’ or ‘have you cut up a heart yet’. Little do they know it’s a bit more interesting than people may think. Here’s a day in my life so you can see for yourself!
At university my Thursday starts at 9.15am with a lecture on project and career development. In this lecture we think about what topic we want to do our independent study about and develop skills such as statistics in order to complete the independent study.
Today I learned about careers and what to do when I finish uni. I’m only in my second year, so it seemed a bit soon to be discussing what to do when I graduate, but I soon learned that you can never start early enough in getting work experience and deciding on applications for things like PhD and Master’s degrees.
One part of the assessment for this lecture is making a CV and cover letter for a job we might want to apply to; this is really useful because it means you can kind of ‘rehearse’ before it comes to the real job application.
In the afternoon I had a lecture on molecular and cellular biology. This module is a bit more science-based, so what you would expect from a biology course. We learn about things like bioinformatics and protein localisation in cells.
In today’s lecture we were preparing some cancerous pancreatic cells from mice ready to culture and look at next week to see how they secrete insulin and to see how potential blockers of insulin secretion work.
In the lecture we also stained some cancer cells and looked at them under the microscope. This day ended at 18:15 for me, but each day ranges from 4 hours a day to 8 hours a day , it really just depends on timetabling.
If you like doing practical labs, University of Worcester is the place for you, of my three lectures this week, 3 of them contained a practical in the lab (and you get to look like a cool scientist in your lab coat). Practicals range from microscopy titration so whatever it is you like doing you’ll find a practical to match this.
The lab rooms at the University are huge! They are more than big enough to give you space you need to work on your own and in groups. Whilst the stools can be uncomfortable to sit on during lectures, the majority of the lecture you’ll be up and about anyway.
I love my course because not only does it give you the opportunity to learn interesting content through lectures and practicals, but it provides interview experience and CV development to set you up for your future career in further education or as a scientist.
Worcester Student Life 