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My name is Karina Zala, I’m doing Mechanical Engineering, I’m in my final year.
At the moment I’m on reading week, but Fridays are my busiest days.
I have lectures all day long.
I live in student accommodation and it can be a total laugh.
As part of the course, we have a lot of projects and practical work to do.
We have a final year project and I’m doing mine on engine performance testing.
The lecturers here are really good and really helpful and they’re easy to talk to and approach.
They know who I am as, lets face it, there’s not many girls on the course!
It is a male dominated field and I first I was a bit scared
but I think the mission of the University is to make everyone feel comfortable and professional;
to feel confident in what they learn.
I did my placement with Case New Holland – CNH tractor plant based in Basildon, Essex.
Splitting apart the front axle from the engine, the engine from the transmission, transmission from the rear axle;
I was basically taking a tractor apart.
I really enjoyed it to be honest. I love that side of things; I love getting my hands dirty and taking things apart just to see how it works.
I was hoping the spaceship was going to hang around longer than it did because I would have really liked to take a look underneath the bonnet.
They didn’t even land in the end which was a shame because I had a lot of questions.
I was going to change the title of my dissertation for a while to ‘Transport phenomena in inter-stellar travel: A study of fluid dynamics and momentum transfer in hyper-drive engine functions’
but without the craft being here to run diagnostics on I’ve gone back to tractors for the time being.
I think when I first came to University I was a little bit confused; I was homesick;
I was like a little kid and I’m still a little kid now but I feel more comfortable being on my own and taking care of myself.
I can’t really count how many friends I have made here
but I’ve made some really good friends; probably the type that
even when you finish University in ten years time, you could still talk to them as if ten years hasn’t even passed.
When I finish here, I will be confident that I will be able to go and find work
but I think at the same time it will be a scary place because I will be stepping up into the real world.