Articles

This is the fifth article in this series chronicling my experience as an international student in the UK in 2016/2017. If you would not want to start at the end, you may want to begin where it all began

As an international student at Cranfield, I actively sought opportunities to visit places within or outside Cranfield. This pushed me to volunteer for any trip that suggested I would visit someplace new. The Cranfield Student Association routinely organised bus trips to explore cities outside the Milton Keynes area. They would advertise a given date and ask interested persons to sign up by paying a specified fee (usually cheap). On the given day, participants would join a bus (coach) on campus that would drive to the advertised city, then they would disembark and be asked to note where the bus is parked, proceed to roam around the city, and return to the bus at an agreed time. I joined this arrangement to visit the Kensington area of London, and later had a chance to explore Oxford. My journey to the Kensington area of London triggered aimless roaming of Imperial College, and landed me with a trip to Israel and Palestine in August 2017.

Have you read Part 3 – Academics and Flexing?

My academic work continued in January and February 2017. After the penultimate module, the coursework portion of the MSc programme came to an end with a final module, Management for Technology. This module was arguably my best and most enjoyed not necessarily because of the highly relevant content, but because the lecturer, Stephen Carver, was more like a comedian with excellent technical knowledge. Each class was a hit back-to-back, with enough laughter to go around. Who said lecturers had to be boring? I would go on to adapt Stephen’s style a year later when I handled project management training classes for a firm in Nigeria.

Have you read Part 2 – Integration Shockers?

By December 2016, we had covered three modules and seen results for the first module. When I had seen a score of 65% for Dynamics of Fluidic Energy Devices, I told myself that it would be my least score at Cranfield. We were now to write exams for Power Electronics and Machines. Scoring 87% in that module would have been impossible if not for the classmates I repeatedly disturbed to explain certain concepts that had hitherto seemed like Chinese shorthand. How I managed to score higher than my “tutors” remains a little mystery. Repeating this score for Risk and Reliability Engineering, then scoring 76% and 78% in two simulation-based modules gave me some comfort say I no come England to carry last!

Have you read Part 1 – In the Beginning?

The next Monday, 3 October 2016, Cranfield’s School of Water, Energy, Environment and Agrifood (SWEE) began its induction week. Then the following week, we had our first module, Dynamics of Fluidic Energy Devices.

I finally get to write this article to chronicle my journey through Cranfield University, the UK’s only postgraduate-only university. Writing this has been on my mind since I finished my thesis and awaited final results, but I felt the time was not right. Before you read on, please be aware that despite my best intentions, this might turn out to be a narcissistic post. If such would disgust you, please stop here and read about my mom or my dad.