Lily Berman

I got to have the most exciting 8 months of my life so far

I wasn’t originally intending to spend a year studying as far away as Australia. When I started my degree four years ago I wasn’t even intending to study abroad. However, as time went on I realised that this opportunity was too large to pass up, so I applied to spend my 4th abroad. Thanks to the flexibility of Edinburgh’s degree programmes it was simple for me to make this choice three years into my degree

I was allocated the University of Sydney (USYD). Even though my exchange was cut short by COVID19, I got to have the most exciting 8 months of my life so far. The university campus is beautiful and Sydney is an amazing city; there is tonnes to do in terms of cultural activities, bars, shops and cafés (Australian coffee is excellent). It’s surrounded by extensive beaches and national parks easily accessible by train. There’s also the opportunity to travel. I was lucky to be able to take full advantage of this, and managed to cram in many of the tourist hotspots of Eastern Australia such as the Great Barrier Reef, camping in New Zealand’s Southern Island and even a few weeks volunteering on a farm in Tasmania.

The teaching style at USYD is very similar to that of Edinburgh, yet the Australian and UK education systems don’t match up perfectly. At USYD, undergraduate physics is taken as a major or minor as part of a three-year Science degree. This means that all third year students only take up to half of their course load from the School of Physics, leaving a lot of space to study other subjects. People often choose courses from maths or chemistry, but it’s also possible to study something unrelated to physics.

I found that USYD was flexible in allowing me to tailor my programme of study. I got to study things that aren’t taught at Edinburgh such as plasma physics and photonics, which ended up being my favourite course in my degree so far. I also took things I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen or been able to choose at Edinburgh such as quantum field theory, which is in the realm of theoretical physics. I was also able to take a geophysics module, and managed to arrange to do a small optics research project as well.

A highlight of my exchange was the chance to be a fresher all over again and meet lots of new people. I made some great friends who I hope to stay in touch with for a long time to come. There were challenges, of course, but these are a great way to improve your independence and resilience.

Overall, it was one of the most eventful 8 months of my life. There were fires, floods and then a global pandemic. I took some really interesting courses that have affected the path I want to take within physics. I got to see rainbow lorikeets and giant bats in the trees as I walked around campus and see stars I’d never seen before in the Southern sky. I know that I want to go back some day.

Read Lily's full article on the School of Physics and Astronomy blog.