The End

On Wednesday at 11:30, I finished my degree. It was a pretty surreal moment during the exam. I finished the second essay question (the final one I would ever write at Kent) and it hit me that I was actually done. I'd been waiting for that moment for a very long time, and it was weird thinking that it was actually there at last. For the past couple of days, I've been feeling a bit lost - well, you spend four years of your life working towards something, what are you supposed to do when you reach the end? But today at least I feel a bit more normal, and I haven't woken up with the thought of "what am I meant to revise today?". Now I just have a mere three and a half months to wait for my Master's to start. I say 'wait', what I actually mean is 'spend three and a half months raising £5,500 so I can actually pay for my Master's and travel to London'. Hopefully I'll be able to do this quickly. In any case, as long as I have my tuition fees (just under £900 to go!) and enough for my first three-month season ticket (£1,364, assuming the prices don't go up just yet), at least I will be able to start - then I'll worry about the other money when I have to. As always, if you feel you'd like to help my cause, please visit my fundraising page. As you can see, I've made good progress so far!

Anyway, back to my BSc. I won't pretend that I've loved every second of my degree (far from it!), but I can definitely say that I did enjoy it overall. My first year wasn't great. While many students adore fresher's week and like the fact that first year grades don't count, I can't say I have this mindset. Apart from statistics, the first year was a repeat of my A-Levels, and so I didn't learn a huge amount. I also had a complete nightmare with my first year housemates (parties until 3/4am most weekdays, an irrational fear of housework, chicken bones on the table and week-old lasagne on the top of the fridge. Nice.), and the original group of friends I'd made in the first term dropped me when I stopped giving handouts of my notes (motivated by the fact that they wouldn't show up to lectures if I gave them notes) and told them I couldn't afford rent for a house with a £2,000 deposit. I have to say that I came close to quitting quite a few times in my first year! On the flip side, I did make some great friends in the second term, and found a house for my second year. I also had fantastic grades (well, what do you expect with multiple choice exams?), and won a prize for my exam results, so my first year wasn't terrible.

My second year was my favourite year. I felt like I did learn things, and hugely enjoyed biological and cognitive psychology. It was the most intensive year of my degree - essay after essay, four statistics exams and six written exams - but I do thrive on a heavy workload. I was also living away from the idiots of first year, and we had a hell of a lot of fun in the house. Alright, some crazy moments were perhaps mentally scarring (those who were there know why), but it was fun overall! Second year was also the year in which I had my first taste of research. I helped on a project investigating prosopagnosia (face-blindness) being run by my current supervisor, which made it easy to start work on my placement year.

The summer following my second year was spent working. I kind of started my placement early, and to be honest, I never really stopped this work! Third year was the year in which I learned the most - funny, considering this was the year that I didn't have a single lecture. I started working on a project investigating disorders of consciousness. I don't think I will ever forget the moment I first worked with a patient. We went to the hospital and I thought we were just going to meet the patient - imagine my surprise when my supervisors said to start setting up the EEG. I think I'd only had one practice, running an EEG on a healthy person is nothing like setting up an EEG on a (quite ill) patient. Nothing like being thrown in at the deep end! After a while though, this becomes second nature, and I gained so many skills from the year as a whole. As well as the disorders of consciousness study, I also helped on a study investigating hemispatial neglect (a condition in which patients don't attend to stimuli on the opposite side of their brain lesion - usually the left), started working towards my current migraine study, and even published my first peer-reviewed article!

I'm very happy I decided to do a placement. I often had my doubts, and it was incredibly hard when everyone I knew finished their exams and graduated. You can't help but feel that you're being left behind. But, the experience I gained was invaluable, and some moments I experienced when working with patients were incredible. Plus, I think I would have gained a lot less from my degree if I'd have skipped the placement.

So, my final year. Again, this wasn't my favourite year of my degree. It seemed to crawl by so slowly. I didn't really know anyone in the lectures, two out of my four optional modules were so badly organised that I still don't really know what they were trying to achieve, a third optional module I took purely because it was the only one with a vaguely cognitive element, and the final one could have been fantastic, had I not learned everything on my placement year (it was convened by my supervisor, so I should have known)! However, my grades this year have been brilliant - something I can only attribute to the placement - and I had the chance to cite myself in one of my essays (it turns out, quite a lot of other students did this as well - fame at last!). I am glad that I had the chance to coordinate the migraine study during my final year, as it was really the only thing I had to do. So, not a great year overall, but I did enjoy working on my final year project and extended neuroscience essay. Hopefully, I'll get good grades in my exams, and I should end up with a first overall.

While my degree has had its ups and downs, I think that deciding to go to university was the best decision I have ever made. If you'd have said to me five or six years ago that I'd be here now, having seen patients recover from various neurological problems, published an article and ended up with such high grades, I'd have told you that you were insane. It's funny how these things turn out!

What to do now then? In a few weeks I'll be off on holiday. Other than that, I have a bit more research work to do. Then, I'll be starting my MSc. I'll be interested to see how the MSc turns out - it should be more intensive than my BSc, and much more in line with my research interests. Plus, I've moved up to one of the UK's best unis, so we'll see whether this gives me even more work to do. Whatever happens, I'm sure I'll enjoy it, and I can look back at my BSc as the start of it all. I just can't believe it's over!