ChemSoc: What have we been up to?

Student experience 5th February 2021

Find out from Charley, the ChemSoc Inclusion Officer, what ChemSoc are currently doing and the upcoming chemistry events you don’t want to miss.

Well here we are, 2021… I guess we in ChemSoc had all hoped that this would all be over by now and we would be getting back into the labs! No such luck!!

Anyway, as we were all rushing around trying to get our heads around online learning and those of us in 4^th year were ploughing through our literature reviews, ChemSoc had a series of guest lecturers who presented via Zoom and we had a pretty good turn out!

We will be doing that again for 2^nd semester, keep an eye out on Twitter and Facebook for updates and do come and look in on them. We are doing our best to align them where possible with the ongoing lecture courses and so you will be able to gain a little extra knowledge to put towards your exams. Your ChemSoc committee appreciate how hard this is for all of us and we are working hard in the background to keep things as smooth as possible for all of the cohort.

What else are we doing right now?

Oh yes, I am running an online chemistry demonstration on 06/02/2021 to celebrate LGBT history month and supporting me is Dr Jenny Slaughter, yes the same Jenny who left us in December 2020! So if you would like one more Jenny lecture then please do come along and join in; we were hoping to be able to do the experiments live but between COVID rules and the unpredictable weather, we decided to prerecord it and there will be Q&A afterwards… but it was lots of fun to make and to edit!

We have some merch in the pipeline, we are hoping to make some hoodies available for purchase to show off your chemistry skills and general awesomeness! We are getting the design finalised now so keep an eye out for that! We are also hoping to be able to do the traditional lab coat pub crawl at the end of semester 2; this will hopefully be allowed by then but it really will depend on what the rules are at the time. We will keep you updated!

I know how much of a struggle this is for us all… so please please please, reach out.

I’ll be honest with you all, I was really struggling at the start of January, I wanted to quit my degree. I just couldn’t cope anymore, I was sitting at home and crying into my notes because I would sit down to do some work and it felt like an impossible task to complete. The material all felt new, like I’d never seen it before. My girlfriend didn’t know what to do, she was trying her best to help but we both knew this was something I was going to have to do myself.

So I emailed Dr Weise first of all and then after letting some of the emotion out I emailed Dr Brisdon. He sat me down and helped me to see a way through the swamp of revision I was drowning in; I think I did pretty well in the end but make no mistake, I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t reached out. The academics want to help you and so do we at ChemSoc.

I and the other Charlotte have set up an email you can reach out to us if you would like to chemcsquared@gmail.com, it’s on my iPad all the time and I check it everyday. You are not alone in this, I know it can feel that way but you have us, you have your PASS leaders, you have your reps, the academics, the education office… we are all here for you!

Ok I’m done 🙂 here is the link for tickets for the chemistry event on 06/02/2021, they are free and they are for everyone!

https://www.outsavvy.com/event/5693/stockport-lgbt-history-month-2021-chemistry-experiments-tickets

Sending you rainbows!

<3 Charley

ChemSoc inclusion officer 20/21

Twitter: @ChemSocUoM

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UoMChemSoc/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uomchemsoc/

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