A Day in the Life of an Arts & Sciences Student | UCL Arts & Humanities

UCL Arts & Sciences student Anna Ionescu shares what a typical day in her life looks like studying the Arts and Sciences BASc.

For me, balance in my day is really important. At school, I used to be able to spend the whole day in classes and then go to the library and do more reading, more studying and more writing…let’s just say former Anna would be ashamed of me. Now I take a more relaxed approach to my day. I make an active effort to make time for not only my work, but also exercise, friends, and exploring London.

My course is called Arts & Sciences, it means that I will graduate with both a science and humanities degree. The way I tend to explain my degree is that it’s designed for capable people who might not quite know initially what they want to do. So, through the course, you get exposed to lots of disciplines and the hope is that by the end of your degree, you will have an idea of where you want to go next. You will be asked to choose a major pathway (I choose Health & Environment) and a minor pathway (I choose Societies). Your two pathways have to be a balance of science and humanities, so you remain interdisciplinary.

The degree is designed for you to foster key skills, such as research and language skills, so you will also be automatically enrolled in certain core modules. So here’s what a day in the life of a BASc student might look like!

10am – This is normally when I start pressing the snooze button on my phone. Around half past, I will finally roll out of bed and grab some breakfast. Ok, sometimes it’s quarter to 11…If I’m having an especially productive day, I might meet a friend for a breakfast coffee in Russell Square at Cafe Tropea. It’s always nice to breathe in some park air and be greeted by the lovely Italian staff who work in the cafe!

12pm – 2pm – Off to Finsbury park to attend the tennis society’s intermediates training session. You can get there directly from either Russell Square or Euston station so it gives me no excuse not to go! I’ve also made a lovely little group of friends there, so I am always keen to go. Tennis is honestly 50% playing, 50% gossip for me! Can you tell why I’m not in the advanced session?

2pm – 4pm – Knowledge Economy seminar (core module). Still not 100% sure what the knowledge economy quite is, but what I do know is that I love my group and after the seminar we have started to go out for a drink all together. Our favourite spots are either the IOE bar or Marlborough Arms (10% student discount, I believe).

4pm – 6pm – During these hours I am normally tutoring secondary school children online, I teach maths and biology. I started doing it in 6th form and have kept it going ever since, even when I went on my year abroad in Colombia! It’s a great way to make a little extra cash and I have found myself really enjoying it.

7pm – Dinner and winding down from the day. My days usually end up being back to back, so I like to take a minute after cooking dinner to watch one of my favourite series and drink a cup of tea. Sometimes I will also go collect a surprise bag from a cafe nearby with an app called Too Good To Go. It’s a way of buying food from restaurants or cafes that would otherwise go to waste. The other day I got a bag with a cinnamon roll, croissant, pan au chocolate, lemon tart, and coffee muffin for only £2.50!

9pm – This is usually when I actually start doing any reading or assignments. I am a night owl, through and through!

I hope you enjoyed hearing about one of my days at UCL and that you check out some of my favourite spots 🙂

Find out more about UCL Arts & Sciences and the programmes they offer. 

This blog is an example of one day in the life of a student at UCL. Each day looks different for each student depending on the programme, department, year of study, timetable and modules chosen. Head to our online prospectus to find out more about our programmes.