Last summer hoilday, several SCIE students attended the Fitzwilliam Summer Programme at the University of Cambridge, with three of them receiving awards for outstanding essays. Their essays will be published on the Fitzwilliam College website. This article is Albert and Nico’s retrospective and sharing of their experience on the programme.
“Did you know? Human can also go through walls.” Every year when the Nobel Prize of Physics releases, millions of apocrypha come to our view. I would not care it in years before, but the quantum tunnelling effect this year has directly brought our mind to this summer vacation, inculcating us with the valuable fortnight where we embraced physics.
First Impression
Walking from the Cambridge Station to the north, I saw incredible monuments passing in front of me one by one that I could only see on some brochures. Continue going forward, nature takes the dominance with less presence of shops, rendering the unique property of a typical England rural scene: land that never dries, clouds that never gone, skyline that never flats, adding beauty of spareness to the village. Carrying the strong curiosity to this land, I walked into the college with my suitcase – here I am.
Albert
We were all prepared for lessons as we considered us here to learn. Our professor, however, released our stress by his stylish turning up. He strolled in our classroom with his laptop and his British Breakfast Tea in his hands, sitting down, turning on the projector, installing the whiteboard, booting his laptop, putting away his document, setting up the table, and even a gap to sip his tea in the cup. “Good morning!” His stable and confident voice broke the peace. “Good morning!” We greeted back and established our first impressions, and our classes started.
He is specialised in combustion engines and has high achievements. This abundance of knowledge allows him to expand the syllabus to the infinity in our classes, as far as possible, as long as we were able to understand. Every word in ppt could be his inspiration, and the whiteboard became the swimming pool of all our ideas.
Niko
We had our classes within the college, but the classroom was a place for resting, making it not so accommodated. The projector wasn’t functioning, so our professor told a student to grab a whiteboard temporarily… The reason I was so impressed by the first lesion was that the professor was locked outside of the classroom. The door needs to be open from inside while nobody knew it, so we had to crash the door. Moreover, after we came in, the professor closed the door and accidentally locked the tutor outside…
The professor taught everything vividly. He told us to build up a classroom with rows of clocks in our mind and told us to think him as an individual clock; then he ran in the classroom to show us the practical effect of time dilation effect. When it came to significant key points, he would suddenly scold “Ha!” and stopped his speech, staring at each of us to ensure that we stayed focused. Though devices were simple, he was always capable to translate abstract professional conceptions into practical examples.
Every day we have 3 hours’ lecture in the morning and 1 hour in the afternoon. The course is more like the preparation course before studying natural science physics in Cambridge with special relativity and quantum mechanics. To be fair, this course was hard and requires a lot of mathematical foundation. Our professor would normally do theories first, then example questions, and finally stepping to questions of special relativity if we had enough time. We did have someone who was struggling with maths, but our professor supported us patiently by grabbing a small chair and teaching beside us one by one to eliminate obstacles in maths. Therefore, everyone could be cared and heard in the class.
I love the café at school; I noticed it right away when I stepped into the college. The environment is enjoyable, and it was near our classroom, so I often went there after classes, especially in the afternoon in front of windows when the sunlight warmly shone onto my face, embracing us with the special English climate. I have found myself often sitting by the window, visualizing those abstract physical phenomenon in my mind. It is here that I’ve come to realized how much I enjoy the process of thought and imagination, even though hours are taken to figure out the essence of theory.
But without exception, grasping the heart of these ideas require a great deal of deep thought and bold imagination. Each time I dive into this intense process, the insight I gain brings me an incredible sense of fulfilment. Perhaps that feeling — that thrill of understanding an abstract concept and forming our own perspectives — is what drives me most to study the subject.
Albert
I aimed to adjust vehicles to fit the need of sustainability. This topic is very open, so I kept seeking for inspirations from our IGCSE and A-Level Physics textbooks while sticking to his lectures all the time. Fortunately, our textbooks had taught us a lot about forces, which then allowed me to transit to university-styled classes easily. In fact, for our subject, engineering, we were not required or expected to enter the summer school with a deep understanding of it around level of university and high-level competitions because we would learn everything we needed in lectures. In the other hand, the mindset of solving problems as a proper engineering student takes the majority.
Courses designed and provided by Cambridge, one of the top universities around the world, are sure to be challenging. As the course went on, we received a lot of formulae and conceptions, resulting someone leaving the classroom with confusion. Luckily, our professor successfully discovered this condition with his sharp eyes. So, solve this, he separated us into groups and allow us to have discussions. Therefore, for a few days before classes, we would have a brainstorm in the café near our classroom to share our ideas. Though the system of knowledge for any of us is not so developed, all of our ideas pile together and finally forms a stable and insightful understanding. Going step by step tightly is the crucial part of writing an essay.
【 Punting 】
On the second day after we arrived, the college arranged a local activity for us – punting. We climbed aboard to small boats and left the shore and went along the river Cam as if we were the reference of the world. Inheritance of centuries stood across the river from the contemporary architecture and went by us one by one: church of King’s college, tower of Trinity college, formulae from Math Bridge, Xu’s poem beside the Sign Bridge. The river goes through the whole city and nurtured millions of genii in this magical place, but at that time it held us to travel and connected us to the good old days in the past.
【 Downtown 】
Tranquillity sprawled above Fitzwilliam college, insulating us with the noise far away, even eliminating the potential disturbance from buses. Nevertheless, we often visit the downtown of Cambridge to thoroughly discover the core of culture of this famous city. Every day after classes, we were always in the downtown as if we were some non-player characters. We wandered through each street and entered every little shop of attractiveness and swam in the ocean of exotism.
People always say that UK is the dessert of food. To be honest, if you search famous dishes of England on any Chinese travelling apps, you will get: Fish & Chips for London, Fish & Chips for Manchester, Fish & Chips for Edinburgh, Fish & Chips for Cambridge, Fish & Chips for Breakfast, Fish & Chips for Lunch, still Fish & Chips for dinner. Stereotypes are everywhere, and we were just there to break these. For many times, we went directly into random restaurant; and surprisingly, none of them return us with disappointment. We even had to doubt if UK is really the dessert. Looking for tasty items are a chronological but interesting process.
However, accidents took place quite often. Short after the lessons started, NiKo lost his Apple Pencil by deliberate carelessness, covering his academic research with paramount inconvenience. What else can we do? After a severe conflict in heart, we decided to purchase one new from the downtown store. Unfortunately, the store in downtown closes at 6 p.m. What’s worse, we could only go during the 40 minutes’ break, whereas the navigation told us that we needed 60 minutes on the road. Speed up! We raced along the road, rushing into the door, picking our item, checking, paying, everything in a row just before we started to return. In the end we gained a bran-new stylus pen, 2 bodies run out of energy, and lasting excitement of triumph.
【 Essay and Presentation 】
Albert
Halfway through the summer school, we had to formally choose our topic of research. I chose the research of sustainability of aircraft, with which I am quite familiar. Creating a content is never easy for a high school students starting from 0 – but not impossible. Therefore, I spent days collecting inspirations and valuable points of innovations on different academic periodic and websites. I still can’t forget his eyes full of astonishment when he saw me trying to buy an aircraft. Afterall, that was just a misunderstanding, as I was just about to see the good points from Airbus.
After roughly exploring the viable paths, another problem emerges. If I decided to compose my project starting from 0, there weren’t many references, let along pictures to be used. But this type of cases, obviously, were never easy to beat down an SCIE student, as we always have millions of ideas in our minds. No picture? Draw! No data? Estimate! No inspiration? Discuss! Astonishingly, we I completed everything and looked back, I didn’t discover my hidden talent of art was so abundant; maybe not quite enough to be an art student, but definitely capable for some simple structural diagram.
Nevertheless, the essence of writing an essay is always shaping and improving it, and the most extraordinary one is the process of writing the abstract. I was quite confused as I hadn’t completed anything similar. Wisely, our professor spotted this out and, therefore, he used a whole class to elaborate the structure of an essay and some strategies in creating different parts. As abstract is similar to the summary of a passage, every time I modified the content, I would have to modify the abstract, or worse, writing a new abstract from totally blank. To reach a high level, I wrote 8 versions of abstract, each started from blank. It was an exhausting process, but it paid off a lot to me because our professor gave me high feedback. It is always worth endeavouring to science.
Niko
Our essay had to focus on themes related to courses. I determined my topic rapidly because I had done some studies before the school. Finally, I integrate those thoughts into a thesis on the early development of quantum mechanics and interpretation of different schools because beyond the intricate equations lay profound philosophical questions concerning the nature of reality itself. For example, I employed Schrödinger’s cat in my work to introduce the early speculative science: some physicists thought the dead-and-alive cat truly exists, others posited we live in the multi-verse, while yet another school proposed the concept of “decoherence” … I found myself immersed in days of deep, and at times overwhelming, contemplation. Nevertheless, this process of intense thinking ultimately yielded personal progress in understanding the essence of the theory.
That period was quite tricky. A new idea suddenly came to my mind so I would like to verify it with my professor that afternoon after the class was over. Unfortunately, he had left before I arrived, and I could not afford to wait because my presentation was tomorrow! Without hesitation, I sent an email to my professor to which he replied immediately, indicating that he would be willing to see me 40 minutes before the class of the next day. That was the exact moment when he encouraged me to share more points. He also entitled me some privilege to extend my presentation time to the end of the lesson, though I still carried it out more than 45 minutes, extremely long (sincere apology to my audience orz orz).
On a midnight, I quietly left my room and broke into Albert’s dorm. He was obviously astonished as this wasn’t the right time, neither the right person, neither the right content. However, when I said my pure hope which was just to practise my presentation, he immediately showed great support. Then, we threw clocks away and started my presentation full speed ahead, from conceptions to high-level theory, from examples to formulae, slowly but fully developing my knowledge system. He was not impatient at all and provided me great confidence at all times. Later that night I happened to find that my presentation lasted for one hour! It was quite extraordinary that he persisted.
【 Award Ceremony 】
Closing ceremony marks a location in our memory that allows it to flourish on. At the end of that dramatic fortnight, we walked into the auditorium with our best dress on to give the best full stop to this school. After settling down, the sky is yet to be dark with birds outside, pigeons and crows are still shouting outside to us: “Never Let Me Go!”. All sort of this results in inability to stay and unwillingness to leave. We went up to the stage in turns, row by row, to claim the crystal of our produce 14 days, that certificate of completion.
I thought that the award would go to the most academic students in our class because there were quite a few talented students in class. Nonetheless, when I prepared to accept the sense of disappointment when the host said, “The best presenter award goes to…”, “NiKo!” suddenly came to my ear. I was nothing but shocked and stood still until the other nominee pulled me forward. But of course, having this award is astonishing.
【 Formal Dinner 】
Halfway through the dinner, the director of activity Mr. Bolgar took over and announced the final words of this summer school. Surprisingly, except from the ordinary farewells and compliments, he also nominated a mysterious person who has been recording every moment for the whole activity. Who could he be? Or say, who else could he be? ME! Applause blasted in the buttery with appreciation from all directions. When kindness is paid off, kindness passes on. For sure, we were there to do academic tasks, but experience as such might be more precious, it is the golden part lying in our memory, shiny bright.
【 Farewell 】
Everything went on so fast and passes in a sec, dissolving in the history before we tasted them carefully. That morning, we packed up and boarded the bus heading to Heathrow very early. Everyone apart from me was sleeping, but I didn’t, because I didn’t want, and I couldn’t. I tried to brand as more sites of Cambridge in my mind as possible, until Cambridge moved further and further, and finally disappeared at the end of the horizon.
After embarking, I finally failed conquering the strong stress and fell asleep with a long dream, which includes everything – every moment at school, pure friendship in between, and the true song of Cambridge:
Slightly I left, as slightly I came;
I slightly waved goodbye without carrying any cloud in the sky.
【 Extra Chapter 】
Another SCIE student, Angelina, also participated in the Fitzwilliam Summer Programme and received the Outstanding Essay Award in the field of Psychology and Neuroscience. Below is her account of the experience:
The time at the Fitzwilliam Summer Program was an experience which I personally cherished. Studying in a new and unfamiliar environment can be a bit nerve-racking at first, having doubts about communicating with foreign teachers or cultural differences. However, it was not the case. Both the life instructor and the professional course professor did their best to help us. My subject was psychology and neuroscience, and the teachers were really enthusiastic, making the classes interesting and comprehensible. Sometimes we had smaller group meeting sessions where the professor would support us on any uncertainties and make any suggestions on our essays.
During the summer school, I made many friends that I would not have known otherwise, including international students from all over the world. I found it fascinating to learn about different cultures such as food and spots. Not only did we learn and discuss new knowledge we obtained from classes, but we also spent free time together. For example, after the lessons finished, we would go to town and enjoy all the highly rated restaurants together. I am quite introverted myself, but this experience made me more courageous to express myself in front of new people. Communicating in English also acts as the perfect exercise for practising English speaking.
I believe the most important idea is to find a that works for you. The lectures arranged during the program provided us with a lot of advice on writing essays and preparing the presentation. The Cornell Note-taking is a method I learnt from one of the lectures, which I now adopt in my study process at school. For me, it is helpful as it allows me to organise my notes more efficiently. Nevertheless, some of the learning methods mentioned, such as calling friends to study together, did not help me very much personally as I was easily distracted. Regarding the final essay (900 words) and presentation (10 minutes), my first advice is to choose the topic you are passionate about. Make sure to relax.
Most of my classmates and myself was extremely stressed about the essay and presentation, but as long as you try your best to meet your own expectations, it will be fine. Next, be sure to manage your time wisely. I did a bad job on that one and was hurrying to finish my essay due to earlier procrastination. Do not leave ever till the very end. It is best to set aside half a day for preparation for the presentation.
Take this chance abroad as an opportunity to experience Cambridge life and also discover the most suitable way for you to learn.
Most importantly, remember to have fun and enjoy! 😀
- Article / Albert, NiKo, Angelina
