India Friswell

It was a fantastic experience.

I was fortunate enough to go study abroad at the University of Sydney.

I went out there completely unprepared for what was ahead: it took me a couple of weeks to arrange accommodation and to identify suitable courses to take, but once I was settled, it was a fantastic experience. 

The Physics department at the University is very good, however tutorials have one tutor to 300 students.  So it’s definitely a University where you have to be on top of things and if you are struggling you have to figure it out on your own or with classmates.  That said the professors are very helpful and will be happy to see you if you need a bit of guidance.

By far the best thing of USYD were the research opportunities available for undergraduates. I started off applying for a summer student scholarship place at the University (which you got paid a handy sum for!). I had a fantastic supervisor Krzysztof Bolejko, who decided to take me on which I was very grateful for, and which developed into a wonderful working partnership. I went on to do a second project with Krzysztof, which was part of a scheme they run for third year undergraduates. It’s a fantastic scheme and allowed us as undergraduates to get a real feel for research and how to present our work.

I was also lucky enough for my supervisor to send me to Harley Wood School for Astronomy and the ASA (Astronomical Society of Australia) conference, which was held in Perth. My supervisor paid for this venture on the condition that I would apply to give a talk at the ASA. At the time, my flight to the UK was already booked from Sydney before the conference but I decided it was an opportunity I shouldn’t miss. The Harley Wood School is mainly for PhD students and we had four days of lectures from various professors telling us about different areas of research and what opportunities are available to us all. Giving a talk at the ASA was the highlight of my year abroad, it was an invigorating experience and even though I was extremely nervous I enjoyed all of it and met so many interesting people.

In Australia there are so many places to visit and things to do. It’s a big country, but if you hire a car you will get to see how awesome and diverse it is! If you love travelling this is definitely the place for you.

If there is one thing I have learnt from this year, it’s that you must go for every opportunity you can take in whatever area of study/research you are in because it will all pay off eventually.