An English second year swapped lectures with her BioMed housemate

Could you have gone into uni and started any degree? Despite our shared love for Parks & Rec and Dominos deals, my housemate studies BioMed and I take the polar opposite: English. So for the last week of term we swapped lectures and tried out each other’s vastly different degrees.

As I haven’t studied Science since my GCSEs, I assumed I’d have the harder time. But it was Clara who said” “I’m worried I’ll find it quite hard, I did A-level English but I hated it.”

My week as a BioMed student began at 9am (cry), in a lecture in which the only part I understood was a slide with pictures of puppies on it. Other than that, the two hours crawled by and I regretted trading in my usual 1pm start. I had no idea what was happening, but even my phone couldn’t save me as we were in the midst of the whole JANET-hack. It was a dark morning.

It was actually a pretty great morning

The following lecture involved a lot of statistics and the word “hypothesis”. I learned how to write a very thorough lab report that hour, and at least now I know what my housemates are talking about when they discuss “T-Tests”.

Clara’s class that day was a lecture on the Renaissance. It didn’t take long for Clara to begin secretly revising her Bio notes under the desk, giving up because “this isn’t Shakespeare and he’s the one I know.” Maybe it was Roy Booth’s soothing tones, or her claims about the theatre’s warm seats, but towards the end Clara actually fell asleep for a few minutes. I missed the photo op and I’m sorry.

Secretly revising Biology while we listen to Roy discussing mad Duchesses

Her verdict: “It was livelier than Bio, I can’t believe everyone actually laughed at the lecturer’s jokes and the applause at the end was so sweet.” Us English students are a kind and caring people, it seems.

9am, Thursday: I genuinely cannot remember a thing about this lecture because I’m pretty sure I slept with my eyes open for most of it. Nobody should be required to actually process information at such an ungodly hour.

That being said, once a week I have to peel back my eyelids and buckle up for a Friday 9am. I might take Clara every week because she made sure I was actually on time for once. However, I don’t think she’d be keen as I looked over halfway through to see her knee deep in Instagram stalking.

Seven layers deep into an Instagram stalk

With my overall lack of mathematics skills and Clara’s general inability to stay awake, we decided to stick to our own classes in the future. I was definitely born to be a student with minimum contact hours and afternoon lectures, where most of the work involves reading in bed. It was fun, but the 9am starts were not.