A day in the life of a neuroscience student

Elena, a Neuroscience student, tells us what a typical day is like for her during term time.

The alarm rings, once, twice, and then it’s a cup of tea, a quick breakfast, rushing to get ready, rushing into rush hour and onto the busy bus. Most of my days are 9am starts, as life science degrees involves quite a lot of contact hours.

Despite the slow traffic I make it to the lecture theatre just on time, conveniently find a seat at the edge next to a friend and start making notes. It’s my second year so my timetable is fairly varied, since I was able to choose which modules I wanted to take and I prefer a bit of diversity. This class is the physiology of systems, where we learn about movement and senses such as vision and hearing. It’s partly new to me and I’m finding it interesting. Apart from that, this term I’m taking old-school neuroanatomy (looking at brains), pharmacology (learning about drugs), Spanish, and cellular neurophysiology, which is as complicated as it sounds. These modules are more “traditional neuroscience” than I studied last term, I suppose – previously I was taking maths, essential and lab-based molecular biology, as well as Spanish and pharmacology. My weekly time table gets bulked out with lab sessions and workshops as well as the ordinary lectures.

I have a couple of hours’ break so I queue up for a coffee in the library, and next read the recommended reading on systems, since I’m interested in what the lecturer mentioned. My New Year’s resolution to stop buying so much coffee on campus sometimes fails after a 9am lecture, not helped by the convenience of a cafe inside the science library. I bump into some course mates so I join them to make some notes, and then we head to pharmacology, which is about schizophrenia treatment today. Around 200 students take the module so it’s in one of the bigger lecture theatres.

That’s already the end of my lectures for the day, but I’ve signed up to participate in an experiment, focussed on the overlap of dance and neuroscience. It’s interesting to talk to a scientist and experience their research, and I get paid for an hour’s work, so it’s a win-win situation. It’s a research centre on UCL campus so I get there easily. I didn’t have time to make my own lunch in the morning, so after the experiment I buy my favourite from one of the UCL cafes. While grabbing food I spot a friend in the middle of essay deadline panic, so I chat to her and wish her luck.

The neuroscience society is running an event in the evening, a conference about virtual reality, so I decide to stay in the library and attend that later. I plan to study until the conference, but after an hour or so I want a break. I call my boyfriend while we’re both free for a while to catch up on each other’s days, before walking out of campus to the neuroscience talk. I find some course mates, and we grab free drinks and sit in the middle to listen to the visiting researchers.

Aside from these occasional conferences, I’m also in the running society and sometimes I do dance. As a fresher I signed up to far more societies than I could fit in, and ended up not doing anything with most of them, so this year I’ve taken it easier and only joined a few that I know I’ll actually attend. With the running group I’m training for a 10k run and later a half marathon, while there’s also a big social aspect, with regular nights out and an upcoming weekend away which will be fun. Dance society is more casual for me; I just try out the beginners classes and don’t take it too seriously.

The conference is cool and some of the speakers are funny, but after two hours I feel very ready to stretch my legs and get home. At about 9pm I finally get into my warm flat, make dinner and tomorrow’s lunch, check I’m not forgetting any deadlines, indulge in some netflix and get ready for another day and another 9am lecture.

A word from the writer

Hi! I am Elena, 2nd year Neuroscience student. When I’m not doing neuroscience I like to dance, run, play music and travel whenever I get the opportunity