London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

I often think back to when I first received my offer to study MSc Medical Microbiology. I was sitting at home a few months after submitting my third-year project for my undergraduate degree in biomedical sciences, and got an email at 17:50 that I knew would change the trajectory of my life. At that point, I wasn’t particularly sure what I wanted to do with my life. I’d picked microbiology because I’d liked those undergraduate modules, and a few staff members had pointed me towards LSHTM, where I was immediately captivated by the prospect of an intensive Master's with a focus on laboratory skills. The timing of my offer meant I went directly from finishing my undergraduate degree into my Master's, which I think left me well-prepared to handle the academic rigours of the institution, if a little less experienced than my peers.

When they say the Master's is intensive, they mean it

The first thing I found about the course is that they aren’t joking when they call it an Intensive Master's. Classes during the autumn term run from 09:00-17:00, four days a week, including three-hour labs each afternoon and a half day on Fridays, which was quite a shift from my comparatively relaxed undergraduate. The autumn term is about giving you a grounding in the fundamentals of bacteriology and virology, as well as honing your lab skills before unleashing you onto more specialised modules in the subsequent Spring & Summer terms, as well as obviously the final project.

These specialised modules were my favourite part of the degree. I got to cover a huge range of content in addition to the bacteria and viruses of the autumn term, including Fungi (my favourite!), parasitic diseases, pathogen genomics, and the basics of molecular biology, all inside a single year!

Busy life between lab work & after class in London

This may be a demanding degree, but it was still vitally important for me to take time out for myself. 

While I’ve lived near London for my entire life, I still loved getting to be a tourist for a year, with a personal highlight being when my cohort took a group trip to Thorpe Park Fright Night in October after our morning statistics class. My main hobby outside of studying is watching live music, so another particularly busy evening saw me going straight from a mycology lab session to the barrier of a rock concert inside of a few hours!

My year ended by getting to dust off an old research interest and do a summer project centring on bacteriophages and their therapeutic applications in combination with antibiotics. This was the first time I’d done lab-based research, but I had an incredible (albeit rather busy) time over those three months where things (mostly) ran as planned!

Looking back on my year here, the module that I enjoyed most was Mycology. While I’m not interested in a career in them, I’ve wanted to study Fungi for as long as I can remember, and a secondary reason for my selection of this degree was the opportunity to take an optional module on them, which definitely lived up to my expectations! Another high point was when I looked over the data I had collected during my project and found out that my hypothesis had been correct, and all the time spent troubleshooting had left me with a successful experiment and useful data. 

My next steps

While my course at LSHTM is now over, I’m not leaving just yet. I will be spending three more months at LSHTM working as an assistant practical demonstrator for medical microbiology, assisting next year’s cohort with their laboratory learning over their Autumn term. This will be a huge help to me in terms of future planning, since I am aiming to remain in academia, and this job has me well-placed to see upcoming vacancies and PhD postings within the School.

My advice to you, future students

If I could give one piece of advice to anyone reading this anticipating a year at LSHTM, I would have it be to say yes to things!

I’m not saying to accept every single commitment that comes your way to the extent that you never leave the building and don’t sleep, but do try to step outside your comfort zone and give as many things as possible at least a go! The year is over before you know it, so you may as well try to experience it to the fullest. It’s well worth the added responsibility to become a student ambassador, course representative, or even a member of the Students' Representative Council if it’s work experience you’re after. I could also suggest braving the winter dark to go to the Global Health Lecture Series at least once, but even a choice as simple as visiting the global food markets around LSHTM rather than grabbing yet another Tesco meal deal can help broaden your horizons and make the most of the time you get here. 

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