LSE, the London School of Economics and Political Science. Top university in Europe and second in the world in social sciences.
Before I came to LSE, I was curious about how life is like at university in general and more so, how is it like at the LSE. Since we seem to be crossing the barrier to a post-Covid situation, I thought to share how university life has been like for the past year since a dramatic turn in 2020. Also, the good and the bad!
For context:
The school year begins in late September and ends in June the following year
A year is made up of 3 terms - Michaelmas, Lent, and Summer
Two exam periods in a year, one in January (start of Lent Term) and another that takes place throughout Summer Term
Without further ado, here is how things have been like for me since the pandemic hit us (FYI, I've been living in London this whole time):
Almost zero social life
When I returned to the UK in late September, many things were shut, though the campus remained open before the December lockdown. However, most students chose to stay in their home country, so it was extremely quiet and there were hardly any people around. 90% of my friends stayed at home, and it was quite lonely to be in this big city by myself
Before Covid-19, almost every day (I mean literally Mondays to Sundays), people at LSE and all other London universities will be heading down to the pubs and clubs in the evening. Typical places like Three Tuns on campus and Zoo. With all these places shut and the UK government implementing a lockdown in December, I did not see my friends.
Previously, you'd meet people at societies' events, but with no large-sized gathering allowed, these ceased as well. Without friends I already knew and not meeting new people meant that it was quite a quiet year for me.
Everything went online
Over the summer, LSE announced that all lectures will be conducted online and classes would be in-person for those who could be in London. However, this was only partially true. For some modules, the lectures were not live, but pre-recorded lectures from a year ago. Additionally, though I was in London, half of my classes were online Zoom calls.
It was disappointing and honestly, for the minority of us who decided to reside in London, we felt cheated. As you might expect, the quality of teaching was sub-par, especially for pre-recorded lectures, because you could not ask questions and the duration of classes are very short. Typically, they are an hour of class per week, with 20-30 students.
On the other hand, instead of examinations, we have online assessments. Because of the pandemic, some modules have allowed us to have a longer duration to complete them. For instance, instead of 3 hours, we have 1 week to write essays totaling 3000 words. Yet, this was not the case for all subjects. There was a fiasco for an assessment where students only have 1 hour to complete, and the platform to download and upload answers crashed. This caused panic and the department did not inform all students involved and basically, handled the situation pretty badly. Though I was not affected, I guess this shows how even a good university can mishandle situations.
Internship and job applications are still competitive
You might or might not have heard of the clichés at LSE. That is, people are either into investment banking or consulting. As much as I hoped to disagree, it is true. I got sucked into the hype as well, and have been applying for any and every internship available.
Since September, I have applied to 100+ different companies and have only heard back from 6. Of which, I was offered 4 internships. It was a tumultuous experience because the companies that responded only did so 4-5 months after I applied. The wait was unbearable.
There were days where I felt hopeless because of the rejection emails I was getting. Even worse were the companies that ghosted me, and I had to follow up, only to receive another rejection. My success rate of ~4% is relatively good, but boy, I am not looking forward to repeating this whole process again when I'm graduating.
Now, the good and the bad ...
:) For the courses where the lecturers were kind enough to allow us additional time to complete the assessments, it really helped relieve some stress in these uncertain times. There is also an option to defer assessments and assignments to the late summer, which helps to spread things out during hectic times, especially since the assessment schedule has resulted in some overlaps.
:( Without in-person teaching, the quality of the learning experience has really gone down, especially for courses where they uploaded pre-recorded lectures. You'd expect a £20,000 a year education to be better, but this is what it is. Though student unions across the UK are not fighting for a tuition fee reduction, so hopefully something comes out of it.
Fun fact: Jeremy Corbyn made an appearance at the LSE Tuition Fee Strike in late April (https://thetab.com/uk/london/2021/05/01/lse-fee-strike-rally-held-to-protest-the-universitys-indifference-40595)
Anyways, there you go. How my life has been like the past year. I hope it gave you a little insight and feel free to drop any ideas of things you'd like me to write more about (https://forms.gle/2v4poZLGXPeEf2Ru5). Could be anything, more about LSE or London, etc.
Till next week!
