My Story

Initially a keen Chemist, an idiot who realized the error of dropping Physics only after having the life beaten from his chest with an endless cascading failure of Organic Chemistry practicals, this is the story of an abysmal failure of an application, where I tried to change course midway through and was practically forced to take a gap year.

I'd originally fallen in love with the concept of Atomic Chemistry, the composition of the atom, the various inter-atomic and molecular forces, it explained so much, it sat so logically in my mind, it seemed an obvious choice.

As the year droned on and the hours spent in excruciating pain keeping myself awake during Organic lessons kept piling up, It became quite clear that Chemistry was not my thing. I hated half the course and was clearly retarded when it came to practicals.

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, probably by chance, but it happened. I picked up “Feynmann's Lectures vol.1” (a.k.a the Bible of Physics) and started reading, that changed everything. The way he analysed the Physical universe was astounding, the logic behind his arguments impenetrable, the beauty with which he manipulated the mathematical expressions to reach valid conclusions, miraculous. Beyond realizing that the crux behind the atomic chemistry I'd held so dear was Quantum Physics, I was introduced to Relativity, Classical and Wave Mechanics. By dropping Physics after GCSE, I'd written off the broadest and deepest science. Right then and there, moved by his writings like nothing in the academic world before, I realized I had to change direction and study Physics.

With the starting materials provided by my 6^th form tutor, I sat down in the last few weeks of summer and taught myself the entire AS syllabus. I entered an A2 set at the start of Sixth Form and applied for Natural Sciences at St.John's College Cambridge. The idea was to sell myself as keen Physical Chemist, who had realized his error in dropping Physics and wanted to make up for the lost knowledge so as to be able to gain a more fundamental understanding of Atomic Chemistry. And did that fail epically. During my “General Interview”, there was a very pro-longed awkward moment where she asked me where my Physics scores were and looked thoroughly unimpressed when I mentioned that I was doing them in January. She then proceeded to ask me why my Chemistry scores were so low (86%) and whether I had an excuse for that. I definitely felt that i'd murked the academic interviews, so it was a bit of a slap in the face when my pooling and thereafter rejection letter made their way into my hands. Words can't explain how gutted I was, I really threw myself into that application, I'd fallen in love with the university, the course, the people, and now, all those dreams were shattered. It didn't help at all, that my beloved grandmother died that following week, or that my Dog, who had been a close companion of mine since I'd been 4, was judged to be in such miserable health that he was put down for his own good. This was all whilst I was sitting 11 January exams.

At some point, I did my best to “man-up”, I reasoned that the main thing that had really changed since the start of the application was that I'd really grown a passionate and (hopefully) aptitude for physics. My second choice was Imperial (top notch uni) where I'd applied for Chemistry with Molecular Physics. The idea of molecular physics really appealed to me, the links with pharmaceuticals and hence industry was immense, a booming area of science. Problem was, the course was practically all Chemistry and only the odd option was Molecular Physics, which became highly relevant in the last 2 years. I was still going to have to sit through hours of Organic, not an option.

So I wrote to both UCL and Imperial, explaining my situation and asking about the possibility to switch to a Physics course. Imperial soon after invited me to interview. I walked in wearing my best suit, clean shaven, ready to give it my all. I absolutely stormed through his interview, (By chance I had seen literally all of them the night before) with him regularly telling me how much more he was asking me than the other applicants as I'd been progressing through the questions at such a pace.

He then came with one final resounding question, “so, why did you drop Physics after GCSE??”, I knew from the expression on his face, that I was truly and utterly fucked. I did what I could, flapped around with talk of the way my teacher handled the interesting/challenging parts of the topics, what i'd felt chemistry, it all failed, he didn't buy a word of it and basically ended the discussion saying “I was really impressed by your interview academically, but I'm not sure about your commitment to Physics and I think your a cock”. Whilst I feel I can quite adequately dispute the 2^nd, he was probably bang on about the 3^rd. I'm not sure what it was, maybe my mind had been already thinking about re-application, doubts about imperial, or it could have been the fact that my father was so vehemently against the idea of taking a year out that I felt that if I got this offer i'd be under such immense pressure to take it, worse still, if I took the offer, then rejected them after my results and re-applied how would they see me? I reckon psychologically I didn't want to be given an offer, either that or the events which had unfolded over the last few weeks had just utterly left me in a weak position, maybe a mixture of both even?

Whatever, cutting a long story short, I got rejected. Pretty embarrassing for a Physics candidate with 97% in Maths and predicted A in Physics at the time, but w/e, UCL emailed saying they'd given me an ABB offer, since I already had an A in german, and an A (technically A* but a year early) in Maths, it was a one B offer, the perfect back-up if I completely screwed up in the summer. Or so I thought.

I get an email a few weeks later asking me which of my offers at UCL I want, within in a day I reply Physics. Get an out of office email, so I figure, email sent, response sorted. A few weeks later during the intensity of summer exam revision, the school keeps calling me, so when I go in to sort it, turns out UCL has been frantically asking them which offer I want, wtf? So I call in to ask exactly that and then they break me the news that they've given my offer to an international student, FML. The pressure was on, I had an offer from Duhram for natural sciences (did I mention I got pooled to a really far out college with no catering facilities?) an offer I had no intention of taking, so I accepted and did what I could to get grades good enough for a re-application...

My exams started in May and ended on the 30^th of June. I hated every moment in it, I was under such personal pressure that I couldn't relax for a single moment. Even the exams that I was basically doing for “fun” I.e didn't matter, STEP 1 and AEA were complete disasters. I couldn't stop thinking about how failing them would look awful on my re-application and spent the first two hours faffing around, unable to grip the pen properly. Don't ask me how I got a 1 in STEP, clearly a mixture of grade inflation and the fact that I half answered about 7 questions. Towards the end, I worked so hard and under such time constraints for each subject, that for a period of about 3 days I completely forgot to shower, it just skipped my mind. I was so worried about my A-level Physics exams, whilst I'd gotten 100% in my self-taught AS, in the school taught A-level i'd scraped an A (80%) in January and I genuinely worried that with my appealing practical skills to hand, I wouldn't make the A* and would hence not be able to apply for it. I'd also gotten the lowest D possible in my January Chemistry Organic exam and I was unsure how I could ever improve on that, I spent 2-3 days solidly before it and feared that I'd be unable to better that mark and would thus end up with a B overall, again damning my application.

Unlike some people, who felt a huge sigh of relief after their last exams, were ready to start those summer holidays. I was never truly able to let go. I had no offer which I’d worked for, no offer which I was happy to fall back on, the heat was on from the middle of May and it lasted all through the summer.

It was a real moment of relief on August the 20^th or was it the 19^th? W/e, when I got that letter and saw that I'd scraped the A* in Physics, got a 1 in STEP (not too far off an S) and a Distinction in AEA maths. I had a rest for about a month before I powered out on the re-application, now that's a story for another time.