Today has been a pretty packed full day of academia, so I thought I’d take you on the journey through everything I did so you can get a better idea of just what I get up to.

7am

I woke up and had breakfast. Nothing too exciting but the day has to start somewhere and I always try to make sure it’s with something healthy to get my body working!

I planned my outfit the night before, it’s a new number I got from some local shops and I think the combination is just incredible. The brown jumper really gives my outfit an autumnal feel so I am loving it! (Should I post more outfits? Let me know!)

8am

I always walk to uni everyday! It takes me around 45 minutes from door to door which to me isn’t so bad. That being said, a casual hike for me is around 8 hours so maybe isn’t too bad is just from my perspective.

The route I walk takes me through neighbourhoods, town centres, parks and more! It’s a really good way to get my brain going in the morning to make sure I’m ready for the day ahead.

9am

Now that I’m at uni, it’s time to get to work. First things first I always check to see if any new material has been released for any of my modules. You never know when a lecturer is going to drop a surprise assignment on you. Speaking of, a new assignment just got released this morning, so I need to try to focus any extra studying time today to completing it and putting my mind at ease.

For this next hour though, I’m just going to read through the questions and write down any important facts, equations or notes about each question into a section of my notebook I’ve partitioned off. That way when I come to properly tackling it, I’ll have the best head start I can give myself.

10am

Time for the first lecture of the day: Foundations. If you read my other post you’ll know that this lecture covers the early stages of the solar system and how the planets formed. Today we looked at Mars which just so happens to be the planet I spent a year researching for my first masters degree! It was really nice to go back over everything I’d learnt and see a few familiar diagrams, there were even one or two facts I didn’t know (oops, don’t tell my old supervisor!).

11am

After a short break, we continued onto the second half of the lecture. The topic moved on to the impacts of meteors onto planetary surfaces and how we can use these fallen rocks to study more of the solar systems environment. This lecture also included some great videos on meteor impacts on Earth and the interesting human reactions we have to them.

I do find this module interesting, but I think it might be because I’m a big rock fan. Not the music I mean geology!

12pm

Time for a proper break now, me and a few friends hit the campus canteen for a quick lunch. I think it’s always good to have down time in-between lectures, if I just spent all day doing physics and engineering I think I would explode. I even got to use this time to show people some of the coding projects I’ve been working on in my spare time. Never miss a chance to broadcast your skillset!

1pm

Lecture number two now, this time it’s in Systems. We’ve moved on from the beaurocracy of last week onto more of the structures of spacecraft. This next hour was filled with the different parts of a satellite, how they work with all the other parts, and what sort of stresses and strains they’d expect to experience in their lifetime. To me this module covers things I’ve never really thought about, but once they’re pointed out I think “Of course, this sort of thing would have to be taken into account with any space mission!” I’m hoping that’s the point of the module, and I’m not just tunnel visioned on rockets!

2pm

In this hour, I was in the library. Whilst I was desperate to work on my assignment, I had to finish off my prereading for my final lecture this afternoon. I can do the assignment anytime, but I genuinely find having my notes ready for the next lecture an indispensible tool for my learning.

The library has many different study spaces so I’m still trying to find my favourite spot to work, so far nothing seems to be beating the ground floor study area. Maybe that’s because there’s no stairs to it though (and it’s close to where they sell the milkshakes :P)

3pm

The final lecture of the day, it may be two hours long but it’s in my favourite module at the moment: Astrodynamics! The next hour was filled with orbital mechanics, maneuvers, my trustworthy notes, and excellent animations of satellites perfectly colliding with planets. I find it so interesting and beautiful how everything seems to connect so fluidly in the solar system, all of the orbits just seem to snap together.

The final thing mentioned in this lecture was how the satellites arrive at the planet. They have the option of maneuvering into a nice orbit around the planet, or just hurtling full speed through the atmosphere and crashing into the atmosphere. I think I know which one I’d choose on my voyage!

4pm

Sadly, all good things must come to an end and we’ve come to the end of the astrodynamics part of the module, but don’t fret for long as we move onto the next part: Propulsion!

Propulsion is probably what you think it is, the science of blasting a rocket off into space. All of the physics and equations has been used to send people to the moon and robots to Mars, so I’m really excited to start following in their footsteps.

5pm

Now that lectures are done, I need to get started on that assignment. Thanks to my quick look through this morning I have a pretty good idea on how to do a few of the questions, my notebook is absolutely crammed with different equations also so I’m sure this won’t take me long at all!

Although, I’ve just seen one of the questions contains some hefty differentiation, maybe I should allot a bit more time for this?

7pm

What did I tell you! No time at all!

I’ll be honest I think it was supposed to take me longer than that, but I checked and double checked all of my answers so I’m really confident that I’ll get a good grade on it. The assignment has been submitted and I’m feeling more relaxed already. Time to head home!

8pm

It may already be dark out (thanks Winter) but I still like to walk home in the evening. It gives me a good chance to decompress properly before I get home, plus I seem to perpetually need to go shopping for food so it gives me a chance to drop in on my way.

Lately I’ve been listening to the older Taylor Swift albums (don’t tell my sister) because of the amazing autumnal vibes they give. Walking through all the fallen leaves is really starting to give me that pumpkin spice feeling!

9pm

Once I’m home, I have one final task: Language learning. As mentioned earlier I think if I spent all my time just learning rocket science I would go insane, so I like to learn languages as a way of broadening my palette. Right now I’m learning Italian and French but I’ve only just started so I am far from fluent. It’s really fun to learn though, and maybe they’ll help me with a special project later down the line 😉

That’s all from my day, I hope you’ve enjoyed following along! I might do things like this more often as I am still working out exactly what I want this blog to be keeping track of. Until I figure all of that out though…

Arrivederci!

Cassie 🙂