Imperial Strikes Back: 2nd Year Physics GYG

About me
Hi I'm Sinnoh. A lot of people have made GYGs in quite a short time so let's not be too late to the party. I'm about to go into my second of hopefully four years of doing physics at Imperial College. Outside of physics I'm pretty fond of classical music, history, guitar, and Pokémon. I was somewhat active in the history society and quiz society last year so I'll be rejoining them for sure.

I previously did blogs for year 13 (here) and first year (here). I don't know what to expect from this year so I can hardly say what you can expect from this blog. Last year's was more aimed at prospective physics students, this year maybe I'll actually need the motivation. So I won't go into as much detail about the stuff I'm learning - or I'll put in a different section about it in my updates if people really care.

The academic stuff
For once I am actually intending to grow my grades. Most of the main assessments last year were done after the coronavirus hit, so they were done at home. I didn't revise well at all, and had they not been open-book I'd have been really screwed.

Actually not as bad as I was expecting! Still, I wouldn't want that to be my final grade, and as you can see I was very close to resitting one of the modules. Normally first year would've counted for 7.5% of my final grade, but there is a no-detriment policy in place: if my result for first year is lower than my average for the next three years, it won't count.

So at the very least, I want to get a better overall grade. I need to score at least 60% overall this year to progress on to the MSci course. Second year is normally worth 20% of the whole degree so I have much less room for messing up, too.

I have heard many times that the 2nd year of physics at Imperial is completely bonkers, what with more exams and more frequent lab write-ups and an all-round infamous reputation. With the new course structure it might not be so bad, but I really don't expect to have those great swathes of free time I had last year.

Other goals for the year/things I want to do:

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If you want to follow this blog, either put it on watched or request to be tagged. I'll spam all of last year's tagged peoples with yet another notification, but there's no need to feel obliged or anything.

Sounds like a TzTok-Jad year to me good luck matey

edit: Add me to your taglist of course

Wow, this looks great and I would certainly be interested in reading !

Could I please be tagged? Thanks.

whoa, you’re a second year now
i hope this year is great, can i be tagged please?

Best of luck this year!

Yasss tag me please!

This blog looks so interesting definitely tag me

Physics?
At Imperial!?
Respect!!

I used to love physics at GCSE but that was my limit haha! This looks so interesting, I would love to be tagged please!

God I know I feel old
and I hope so too, at least there's some chance of a vaccine coming out next year so this could be the year in which more normality returns

the i-explore module looks really interesting! keep me tagged

Thanks! and you too. How's teaching working at York?

From what I can tell there is going to be face-to-face seminars where possible but larger lectures will be held online! It must be much weirder being in London though

This GYG looks great. When I was reading your introduction I was wondering whether you would try out for university challenge, and then you mentioned it lmao. Good luck. Can you tag me please? Thanks

Well that sounds alright, I'm sure a lot of people would have just watched lecture recordings anyway hehe. I'll pretty much be at home except for labs and maybe if I'm able to go in to work in the library


thanks. Yeah I tried out for it last year and got to the second round of just 20 or so people, but I did have some insanely lucky guesses in the first round so maybe it was because of that. I like to think I've improved since then from doing quizzes more regularly, but I bet the year I get on the show is the year Imperial set the record for the lowest score ever

Dayyumm part of me is happy Im not at Imperial now lol. Sorry lol, I know youre gonna have an amazing life but uni is so hard for you. Id probs fail first year lol

Well that sounds alright, I'm sure a lot of people would have just watched lecture recordings anyway hehe. I'll pretty much be at home except for labs and maybe if I'm able to go in to work in the library


thanks. Yeah I tried out for it last year and got to the second round of just 20 or so people, but I did have some insanely lucky guesses in the first round so maybe it was because of that. I like to think I've improved since then from doing quizzes more regularly, but I bet the year I get on the show is the year Imperial set the record for the lowest score ever

I guess you can't tell in the moment if a decision is ultimately good or bad. Right now I feel like I wouldn't have liked it at Cambridge and that I like it here, but maybe there's a parallel universe where I missed my offer and went into Southampton and I'm also glad I didn't get into Imperial.

ngl looking at other people's experiences, physics seemed to have quite an easy start compared to other courses.