1st Year at The University of Sheffield by Ioan-Alexandru Herdea

My First Year as an Engineer Student at The University of Sheffield

In my country, Romania, we have a word when something is super mega extraordinary. Concrete. Yes you read it correctly. My first year at Uni was “concrete”.

When I returned to my home country, I had to answer a stream of endless questions, one of the most common being: “What is your life like there?” All my family and friends were eager to find out about my journey and to be honest I didn’t expect it to be so hard to answer them. There were so many things to say, and I soon realised that this would be useful to tell others who were also thinking about studying in the UK. I’d like to share this with you now.

I still remember that my first week in Sheffield baffled me, especially my assumptions about British weather. Just to clarify, I had never been to the UK before and I arrived to a surprisingly sunny week with an average of 16 degrees. It was so perfect, I couldn’t ask for a better start to my 5 Years at University. Then came all the formal activities. Registration, where I had to queue up in Goodwin Hall to and show documentation including my A Levels Diploma, English Exam Proof, my Student Loan confirmation letter and so on. I soon found out that this very same hall was where some exams were held later in the semester too.

After the formalities of registration the fun can begin. During Intro Week you can attend different types of Fairs in the Octagon Centre. Firstly, there is a fair which is run by all the societies that exist here. You can even find your country’s society. I found mine, RoSoc (Romanian Society), but there are many many others such as PakSociety, Arab Society, German Society, the list goes on! There are so many things to choose from such as the International Students Committee, The Women in Engineering Society and not to forget International Engineering Ambassadors (IEAs). There is also a Sports Fair organised by the University Sport Clubs. There are a lot of clubs to choose from including Squash, Swimming and Water Polo, Cycling and last but not least our highly regarded Ice Hockey Club. The ice hockey club is so crucial because every Varsity ends with an Ice Hockey Team game.  To find out about this thrilling game read one of our previous blogs here.

Most of your time will be spent in The Diamond if you are studying engineering. It is a huge cubic, diamond shaped building situated next to a church. Apparently, it cost (please keep calm) 81 Million Pounds. Quoting “the University of Sheffield’s largest ever investment in teaching and learning“. Honestly, it is an amazing place, moreover it is open 24/7, which is very useful when you suddenly remember that you have an assignment due the following day. The lectures mainly take place in the same building and every lecture theatre is equipped with 3 projector panels, 3 brand new projectors and Bose sound systems. Lecture Theatre One is the biggest room in The Diamond with 400+ places, 3 huge 3D video projectors and the same Bose speakers. The Diamond also has cheese-wheel shaped Computer Rooms which are supposed to look like the moon. Personally, I always see them as a Tom & Jerry cheese wheel.

Now, what more can I tell you? Before exams, we are given time to study and during revision week, you really have to be ambitious if you want to study in one of the University’s buildings. Sometimes it can be hard to find a space to study as it gets very busy. I did some revision at home and occasionally got together with my classmates to study together in a lecture theatre. It is very important to order any books from the library well in advance so you are not disappointed. Otherwise you will end up using hundreds of Gigabytes on the internet looking at Youtube, Wiki-How, WolframAlpha, KhanAcademy and other websites for studying. There is no point in buying the books if you can borrow them for free.

I play squash for the University team. This means that every Wednesday I travel across the country to play in the University BUCS League against other Universities and finish the day with a well-deserved Squash Social in ROAR. It is really good fun to be part of a sports club. Going to other cities to try and beat other teams and finally coming back to Sheffield victorious, is a great feeling. Let me explain about ROAR, every Sheffield student knows that on Wednesdays, the Foundry club in the Students’ Union hosts a sports party called ROAR (see photo of Roary the Lion our mascot)  It’s a great party and I have many fantastic memories of some wonderful times.

Finally, as a Fresher, you will hear things like “You are a Fresher, you are allowed to skip lectures!” or “The first year doesn’t count towards the final grade!” or “Come on…there’s plenty of time before the exams!” Yes, all of this may be true, but you should bear in mind that modules are designed in a 30:70 split. This means 30% of your module is taught  in class and 70% is independent learning. As you may know, the minimum passing grade is 40% but everyone wants to do better than that. Sometimes you will have to take a break from the parties and focus on studying. Otherwise you will get behind and could end up having too much to learn in a very short period of time. But this doesn’t mean you can’t have fun and make new friends and socialise,  you should  just need to manage your time carefully to make the most of what student life has to offer.