Month: April 2022

Top 10 tips for being more sustainable

Posted on by Dan Cragg

Hello, my name is Lottie, and I am a first-year student, studying French and Spanish. In support of the Climate Emergency Day of Action, I have considered how we can slightly alter our daily routines so that we live more sustainably and ultimately combat climate change. Here are my top 10 tips for living an environmentally friendly life at university!

1. Natural toothbrushes

We can start helping the planet as soon as we wake up in the morning. Most toothbrushes are made of plastic, which is a material that does not decompose. This means that every single plastic toothbrush we have ever used is still on this planet right now! As a result, many people have started to use organic bamboo toothbrushes instead. These toothbrushes are biodegradable, and they also often arrive in sustainable packaging. As well as this, studies show that they can whiten your teeth and improve your oral hygiene. It’s a win-win!

2. Reusing in the kitchen

After brushing your teeth, you might be tempted to have a smoothie or an iced coffee to start your day. Although it is tempting to use plastic straws, many people do not realise that after using them, they often end up in oceans and waterways, harming wildlife as well as contributing to pollution. Metal straws are an excellent substitution because they are reusable which means they can help you save money, as well as combating climate change. If you get thirsty during the day, I would also recommend that you bring a reusable water bottle with you. There are lots of water fountains on campus and this is a money-saver as well!

3. How should we commute?

It is important to consider how we should travel to university if we want to live sustainably. The fuel from cars has a huge negative impact on the environment, which is why it might be better to car share with your neighbours if you are all heading in the same direction. However, the best modes of transport, which are environmentally friendly, are walking or cycling. Maybe you could challenge yourself and try to walk everywhere for a week? Who knows, you might enjoy it.

4. Sustainable studying

While you’re at university, I would recommend that instead of using Google, you use a search engine called ‘Ecosia’. Ecosia uses its income from advertisements to plant trees across the globe. Therefore, whenever you click ‘search’ you are essentially saving the planet! 

5. Go paperless

With the recent advances in technology, it is surprisingly easy to go paperless. Rather than printing out pages and pages of articles and readings, maybe you could create a university folder on your laptop so that everything is easily accessible? Paper waste takes up the most space in landfills (also trees are chopped down to produce paper) so it is especially important that we do not overuse it. We can easily implement this throughout our daily lives too – when was the last time you actually needed a shopping receipt?

6. Reduce waste

Next time you’re buying fruit and vegetables, perhaps you could buy them in a 0-waste food store! These are shops which were specially designed to reduce waste. In Bristol, you can find them on Regent Street, North Street, Whiteladies Road and Gloucester Road.

7. Shopping bags

Did you know that all plastic bags in the supermarket cost at least 25p? This law was introduced in 2015 to reduce litter and general pollution and studies show that this has been successful so far. If you want to help the environment, whilst saving money, you can use your own bags to carry your shopping home. I would recommend foldable shopping bags (which you can find on Amazon) because you can easily store them in your university bag during the day.

8. Where to buy clothes?

Fast fashion is a huge problem for the environment. Brands such as Zara, H&M and New Look all contribute to the pollution of water and produce waste, due to the manufacturing process of clothes. Therefore, as students, we can easily buy our clothes elsewhere so that we can live more sustainably. As well as apps like Depop and Vinted, there are various vintage and charity shops in Bristol which sell clothes which are in great condition and relatively cheap. I would recommend the Vintage Thrift Store on Park Street and Shelter in Clifton.

9. Reusable makeup wipes

At the end of a long day, if you’re a makeup user, it is always very tempting to use a wipe to remove that last bit of makeup off your face. However, due to the plastic packaging of these products, wipes can become very harmful for the environment. I would personally recommend using reusable makeup pads, which are made from organic materials, such as bamboo cotton. These can be found in the Body Shop and Boots – they are also great for your skin! 

10. Sustainable shower products

Before going to bed, we must be mindful of the products we use. It has been scientifically proven that most shampoo bottles are not recycled correctly. Companies, such as Lush, have created products, like shampoo bars, which do not use plastic. According to the Lush website, almost 6 million plastic bottles have been used due to these shampoo bars! In 0 waste stores (mentioned earlier) there is also sometimes the option to refill your own shampoo bottles from home.

Thank you so much for reading my top 10 tips today! I hope that you learned something new! What are you going to implement into your daily routine to lead a sustainable lifestyle at university?

Written by Student Champion – Lottie Aikens

Assessment tips from someone who knows…

Posted on by Roz Okatan

It’s Week 23 and you are probably either buried in revision or planning your summer break.  Student Comms Officer Roz caught up with Dom who is in his fourth and final year of a Masters in Mechanical Engineering to ask him how he’s feeling about coming to the end of his course, and what assessments have meant for him.

So Dom, you’re working on your final dissertation which for you is a group industrial project.  Is that right? 

Yes, we’re doing a design and build, and building a product is always notoriously tight for time for engineers.  But it is coming along nicely.

Do you find it easier to meet deadlines when working in a group? 

Working in a group always comes with its challenges. You lose efficiency when you’re working in a team because there’s so much more to coordinate and so much more ground to cover. It can be hard to get the ball rolling, but the more you practice the better they tend to go.  By the time you’re in fourth year, group projects are going a lot more smoothly than they were in first year and that’s kind of the point of having them in first year because it’s a skill you have to learn as an engineer. 

If you’re managing deadlines just for yourself, do you have any tricks up your sleeve or tactics you rely on? 

A technique I use is creating your own calendar and then filling in all the time that you can’t be working, assigning time that you can be, and then dividing up the workload. You end up with this big A3 wall calendar with all the time divvied up how you need it, which is useful when you have, for example, five quite substantial exams.  It really helps to make sure that nothing’s being neglected. 

What’s been the main challenge of online exams? 

The biggest issue is time management as it appears you are set five hours’ worth of questions to do in three, and it’s simply not possible.  You also don’t have access to the years and years’ worth of previous papers so you’ll be going into online exams with less resources to prepare from than in person. 

And how did your experience of in person exams compare to the online assessments? 

So in person you would have a lot more “prove this, show this, derive this” questions that you could only really answer if you’d rote learn that technique.  Obviously, being open book and online, that’s no longer a thing that can be asked because you can just look up the solution. So it’s shifted away from those rote learn questions and more towards things that you’d have to actively think about a bit more, which is good, the way it probably should be. 

Is there anything you know now that you wish you’d known as a first year and might have done differently? 

OK, so I would say problem sheets and past papers is definitely the way to go because it’s very easy to find that you understand the topic, you’ve gone through all the lecture content, you’ve read the notes, and you’re like, I’m happy with this and then can’t answer a single question on it!  That’s a very common thing that can happen. You understand all the theory, but to actually get an answer and apply it is an entirely different level that needs to be practised through the problem sheets and past papers.  

When it came to online assessments, did you ever use a Blackboard practice area? 

Yeah, absolutely.  You want to know what the setup of the paper is and what’s expected of you before you go in.  It was good to have access and be like, oh, I’ve got ten of these questions, four of these ones, six of those, and two of the big ones at the end.  

Are there any other resources that you’ve used, for example exam stress workshops? 

I don’t think so. I think the only thing over the four years that I had used might have been some general study skills workshops in first year, but nothing exam specific.  

Do you find you get stressed about exams or are you quite relaxed? 

Obviously they’re stressful for anyone, but I think I’m a lot more relaxed than most.  I find it’s important to remember that if you’re getting yourself stressed out about it, you’re only going to make it harder to actually remember things in the exam. If you can just take a breath and relax it’s only going to help.  So long as you’re preparing for a good time beforehand and you know your stuff sometimes it’s good just to take a break just before going in and make sure you’re calm and relaxed. 

And how do you personally relax if you need to step away from your work? 

It would be just do something that’s not uni related, get a drink, go do something else, just not think about engineering for a little bit.

I know you’ve had Alternative Exam Arrangements and I just wanted to ask whether it was easy to arrange additional support and were you well informed about how it was going to be set up? 

So I’m dyslexic and after the age of 18 you need your adult diagnostic assessment. You need to get your psychologist report and then arrange an appointment with Disability Services who are fantastic. They’re really, really helpful. They’ll explain everything to you very clearly. They take you through your report and what arrangements can be made within your particular school.   

This can be a huge variety of things, like what extra time would be appropriate for you, what working method would be appropriate for you, if you’re in person, would you still be allowed to use a PC to do your exam?  It can also be making sure you’re in low distraction exam rooms, or making sure the exam room is near bathroom facilities or a whole range of different things that they can run through with you and see what can be altered to make it more supportive for students that need that extra support. 

And lastly, how do you plan to celebrate when it’s all over? 

Oh blimey.  After four years – two years in person, two years online – it feels strange to be coming to the end. I genuinely don’t know and I’ve just been so busy with the project work and also trying to think ahead.  For a

 lot of people that’s applying for work, but for me I think it’s going to be looking for a PhD.  I haven’t really thought about it too much yet. I will probably get to the stage I’ll just need to crash out and do nothing for a while. A holiday would be well needed by that point, I suspect!  But equally it will be good to celebrate with friends after four very, very tough years of both the course and COVID. 

I hope a well deserved break is on the horizon. 

Definitely.  I think that’s what the plan will be – chill out!     

 

Don’t forget that you can access a range of study skills and support to help with your assesssments. Good luck!

 

War in Ukraine: past, present and future

Posted on by Laura

This blog post was written by Tom Tokovyi, a final year biochemistry student. Tom was brought up in Bila, Tserkva , Kviv region, Ukraine, and spoke at a recent event – War in Ukraine: past, present and future –  held at Bristol SU in March 2022. The aim of the event was to help us understand more about Ukraine, the current situation and how we can offer support.

“Perseverance – this is the first word that comes into my mind when I think about my home country.”

Tomas Tokovyi holding a microphone during his talk
Tom Tokovyi

It is hard to find a person nowadays who has not heard about the current situation in Ukraine. Nevertheless, not everyone knows about the deep-rooted history of the Ukrainian nation and the major events that led to the full-scale war with Russia. As a Ukrainian studying at Bristol, I felt a strong sense of duty to inform my friends and peers about the current situation at home, and share my knowledge of Ukrainian culture and history.

Together with my friends, I organised a large-scale event War in Ukraine: past, present and future which was attended by more than 250 students and staff. The event was divided into several parts which consisted of the talk – Past and present of Ukraine –  a discussion panel with professors about The future of Ukraine as well as a Q&A with the audience. (more…)

How to be a good neighbour

Posted on by Tyesha

We asked our student champions for tips on how we can be better neighbours and better engage with our local communities, here is what they had to say:

“In order to create an engaged, supportive community, it is essential that everyone contributes to being a good neighbour. As students, we must consider the needs of the people around us, whether they are our flatmates or other members of the public, and we can easily do this through small acts of kindness. For example, we can keep the noise down at night, take out the bins and maintain cleanliness within shared spaces. These tasks require minimal effort but they can drastically improve relationships with our neighbours, allowing the community to become more close-knit and understanding.”

– Lottie

“Being a good neighbour involves a few things that I would consider necessary. The most important thing first is respect. Showing and having respect for your neighbour is a fundamental aspect of building a good relationship with them. Once respect is established, the next step is being understanding.  Remember everyone has different personalities and lifestyles and therefore you have to be open to interacting with them. Lastly, I would say establishing boundaries to me is also key to being a good neighbour. When you establish healthy boundaries, you are less likely to then have future problems with your neighbour.”

– Marvin

“A good neighbour is not just about the person but the personality & the authenticity. If the neighbour is caring, aware of the surroundings, and thoughtful, it describes how the neighbour is good. Similarly, if the neighbour is being the best and the most authentic person of themselves, it also strengthens the fact that the neighbour is good. A good neighbour can also be tangibly seen when you are around them. If you feel warmth, comfort, and you can be yourself without sugar-coating your personality, that means the neighbour is good because there is no such burden for you to feel.”

– Alessandro

A good neighbour is considerate of noise: Do you play loud music or talk loudly in your garden/whilst walking down a street after 11pm?

A good neighbour is tidy: Do you always put your rubbish in a bin? Do you organise the recycling into the right bins and put it out the night before?

A good neighbour is respectful and helpful: If you see someone struggling with something, do you offer to help them? Do you smile back at the sweet old lady sat at the bus stop? Do you make sure not to push past people if overtaking them whilst walking down a narrow footpath?

– Josh