There’s still time to apply to a range of our popular postgraduate programmes AND secure funding for your studies. A range of PSAS funding (for Scottish students) and CTA funding (UK & EU students) is still available along with College bursaries. For full details of the funding available, please visit www.abdn.ac.uk/central/funding
Woohoo! Did we mention the barbecue, open top bus tours, bands, photo competition or the chance to have a sneak preview of our student radio station?
Our website’s absolutely packed full of info about the day’s presentations, demonstrations, exhibitions and events - what are you waiting for?
Hey there blog readers!!
My name is Nick and over the past 4 years here at uni I have undergone all the usual ups and downs of student life, which I will proceed to write about (hopefully to some level of amusement) in the future. The past few weeks of campus life have unfortunately been largely filled with the downs. Why is that? Well, it’s the time of year all students dread and there is simply no getting away from. Exams.
The streets are quiet, the bars largely empty. The libraries are lined with yawning, hoodie clad, shaking students, clutching bottles of water, iPods and highlighters and with that familiar sense of impending doom, they sit. Reading the books and journals they should have read 4 months ago, trying to reorder their largely unreadable lecture notes, highlighting each and every word on the page. Staring blankly at the walls, hoping that some ghostly apparition will appear, present them their exams papers (complete with answers) and leave in a puff of smoke.*
*Note - this has never happened to me while at uni despite many attempts.
I can remember arriving at uni and thinking that exams simply didn’t happen any more. One simply turned up, sat in a lecture, drank some coffee, drank some alcohol, wrote an essay and graduated. Easy.
Not so much. There are exams - in fact lots of them - twice a year in fact, and regardless of how many you have sat at school they never get any less frightening.
It’s a fairly standard thing really. Turn up at the room, sit down, fill in your paper and wait to start (after the compulsory seat and table check to ensure neither wobble).
Then you turn over the paper, see the questions, inhale loudly, then begin (this period of 5 minutes is the most important of the exam as one can usually sum up if you will pass or fail before the pen has hit the page).
Luckily I have only had two exams this term. One 2 hour paper and my last a 3 hour - yes, 3 hours. Alternatively view it as watching any of the Lord of the Rings Films. That is ages.
Exam period is always stressful. Even the most intellectual of students get stressed out. What you have to remember, despite how many times you scream their names in vain, is that the staff want you to pass. They don’t have secret desires to make you fail. They, like students (most of them) honestly want you to succeed.
Just remember this when you’re being lectured for two hours on some obscure aspect of European Legal systems.
Trust me. It helps.
Nick
We know our degrees are first-class, but don’t just take our word for it! The data’s been gathered and the results are in - here’s a roundup of how the University of Aberdeen rates according to the Guardian University Guide 2008:
These subjects were ranked in the top ten, UK wide:
Education, Engineering (general), Law, Mathematics, Medicine, Philosophy, Religious Studies and Theology.
And these in the top four in Scotland:
Anthropology, Chemistry, Computing Science, Economics, Education, Engineering (general), English, Geography and Environmental Studies, History and History of Art, Law, Mathematics, Medicine, Philosophy, Religious Studies and Theology, Sociology.
Visit www.EducationGuardian.co.uk/universityguide2008 for more info!