Chemical Engineer

  • A Day in the Life of a Chemical Engineer

    I’m your fellow friend the chemical engineer at the one and only UCL. To those who are soon to embark on their first year, I would firstly like to salute your courage, and to those of you who are considering doing Chemical Engineering at UCL, I would like to take this opportunity to pose to the question >  Are you TOUGH enough?

    Why? I hear you say, gasping with horror. After all, you’ve probably heard that chemical engineers all over the world work diligently at saving the world, trying to cut down emissions and save baby polar bears. Your teachers have probably given you the speech about how they are needed in every profession, from chocolateering to energy production, and that chemical engineering is one of the most well paid professions in the UK. Indeed, you have probably memorised this mini-lecture yourself, and may have re-iterated to the layperson countless numbers of times, mentioning all the famous chemical engineers you know, Karl Bosch of the washing machine and Fritz Haber of the Haber process to name but a few, probably receiving some impressed nods along the way.

    You will probably arrive at UCL with a polished set of results feeling quite chuffed with yourself. Most of you will have done better than most of your friends, and fancy yourself as a genius in the making, having secured an offer at one of the best academic institutions in the world. You hop into your first lecture beaming with enthusiasm, excited of course to spend some quality time with your new best friend – the calculator. You take a look at your timetable and realise that you only have a few hours of lectures a day and feel relieved that the course is perhaps not AS intense as it sounds. So as the first lecture begins, you sit back, relax and watch the show…

    When the lecturer starts spouting nonsensical calculations about the rate of fluid flow in pipes and the effect Vibronic coupling has on isoenergetic transitions, your fantasies about winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry quickly reach their enthalpy of vaporisation as you realise you might not quite be the genius you thought you were. Looking around you, you realise that nearly everyone in the lecture theatre is eating doughnuts, sleeping or staring nonplussed into the lecturer’s face. Having given up trying, you entertain yourself instead with counting the numbers of ‘Mohammeds’ in the room, or playing spot the national student.

    The days pass by, and although the workload isn’t too heavy, many a time do you find yourself coming out of lectures feeling no more enlightened than if you were to have stared at a can of baked beans for 2 hours. And as each coursework question takes you and your friends at least 7 hours, you find this routine absolutely ridiculous and to maintain a healthy lifestyle you start fishing around for some new friends, and coincidentally find yourself hanging out with the class geek.

    As you start to settle in a bit more, you begin understanding a lot more than you perhaps did in the first term, and you start to take advantage of the dangerous equipment in the labs to give you some entertainment outside the realm of dull thick textbooks. Life starts to look a lot brighter; that is, until the thick black cloud of exams start looming heavily over you. In a panic you realise that your notes are a mess (if you made any notes at all). You missed/slept through at least half the lectures. You cannot answer a single past paper question. You have failed all previous class tests. In summary, you feel that YOU ARE DOOMED.

    Instead of panicking, you give yourself a mental pep talk and realise that you have actually been working hard and persevering all year long, and of course you are Muslim so Allah (swt) is there for you to turn to and you make duaa to like there’s no tomorrow. Before you know it, you meet some final year chemical engineers in the library and decide to make them your best buddies. Pulling all nighters becomes the norm and you find yourself on first-name terms with the librarians.

    Come exam results, to your great surprise you have landed yourself some amazing grades despite everything you went through. You find yourself thinking, “Hey – ChemEng ain’t so bad after all’…at least, that’s what happened to me! ;)

    Studying chemical engineering is by no means an easy feat. It will require you to make sacrifices, put you under pressure, and stretch you to lengths you wouldn’t have expected are even physically and mentally possible. This course will hurt your brain. BUT…this course will also satisfy your thirst for a challenge and will give all you inquisitive people mental fulfilment. Without a doubt though, this course will provide you with a fantastic set of qualifications at the end inshAllah.

    Disclaimer: This extract is a reflection of the writer’s experiences only, and does not reflect the opinions of UCL ISoc