Keeping up with Imperial

One month into my MSc Strategic Marketing programme, I have been overwhelmed with a multicultural cohort of students from over 100 nationalities, numerous career events, job applications and of course, the programme itself.

Making friends in an unfamiliar environment can be daunting. Let alone the fact that you’re reminded time and time again that the deadlines for all your graduate job applications are approaching. Hence, it comes as no surprise if you find it challenging to strike the right balance between all the opportunities coming your way.

You’re probably wondering what this rant is all about? When do you get to live the true Imperial experience?

My secret sauce to how to cope with all the stress, unfamiliarity and multi-tasking is YOU!  You are what defines your Imperial experience. To help you strike the balance between social and academic life, here are some of my top tips:

Make a list of the top five things you want to achieve or attempt

This does not necessarily need to be the cliché “get a job”, “meet deadlines”, “network”, etc. (unless that’s what works for you).

For example, some of the things I have put down for myself would include:

• Get to know people from cultures other than my own on a ‘personal level’
• Be an active member of two to three sports and Career Clubs – if you haven’t already heard, Imperial has over 300 clubs and societies
• Make the most of the career opportunities offered by the university – a wide range of career workshops, sector-specific job fairs and multiple recruitment presentations on campus itself

Identify your career priorities

As you would have identified by now, Imperial places grave importance on the careers front. Hence, it is almost certain that you would be overwhelmed by the career-specific opportunities being offered to you. In my case, particularly, career events tended to take precedence over all the other things that I wanted to do. So much so, I over-stressed about my ability to multitask between job applications and group work commitments and deadlines.

A quick tip – don’t sign up for every single event. Go through the list of events and once again, prioritise! What helped me was making a list of sectors and companies I was particularly interested in and solely focusing on events related to them. This not only helped me improve my sector knowledge but also made room to prioritise other aspects of the programme.

I hope I’ve been able to ease that tension as to how to cope with multiple opportunities at Imperial. The next time you hear someone say Imperial is super challenging, you can rest assured that you’re a step ahead.