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Title:
Lyndsey Dalton-Jarvis
Duration:
4.32 mins
My name is Lyndsey Dalton-Jarvis. I'm doing the Immunology and
Immunotherapy Masters course at the University of Birmingham, and it’s with
the School of Immunity and Infection.
My course, the Immunology and Immunotherapy Masters course at the
University of Birmingham, is about the cellular and molecular interactions of
the human immune system. Obviously it also incorporates the mouse immune
system as well because we use that as an animal model for human research.
It’s all of the Immunology behind how, you know, if you get a disease, if you
get unwell because of your immune system, it’s why that’s happened. It’s a
really interesting course especially the Immunotherapy side of it because it’s
not just a case of we know this about the immune system, we know what
there is about it and how it goes wrong, but it’s also okay how can we deal
with that, how can we treat it, and it incorporates things like cancer vaccines
and bacterial products used as vaccines which I didn’t know even existed
before the course. So yeah, it’s all very interesting.
The Masters course is delivered by a lot of lectures. We've got some group
tutorials. We also have some lab tutorials as well. There's a lot of training in
the actual labs that we do, and then it’s a really good way of teaching because
it’s all very interactive and it’s face to face. So all the teaching is really good
and you can get good communication with all of the peers and all of the tutors
as well.
The facilities on this course are amazing. They're all really well accessible,
starting from something really as simple as a printing service; like obviously
the cost of printing is quite extortionate when you're a student, but when I
came to the University I realised everything was free – it’s free to print which
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is brilliant. And then obviously the science side of things you’ve got all of the
laboratory equipment – so I'm in a Cancer Research Sciences Building at the
minute as part of my course and all of the lab equipment there is really high
top grade. You get trained to use all of it really well, and I don’t have any
problem accessing computers whenever I need those to do any coursework
or anything. So it’s all really good.
There is 8 students on the course this year. There is a very good
postgraduate community. I really liked when I came to the University that we
were kind of thrown in with a meeting with all of the postgraduates. So all of
the research scientists, which was really kind of intimidating but also really
cool to meet everyone and ask everyone what they do. All the PhD students,
we got advice from them. There were like coffee meetings quite often.
There's seminars in the mornings which you can go to about half eight every
Wednesday – they're really good. Again it’s seeing where you might be at the
end of your Masters course, and where you might be at one point in your
career, which is really nice.
I chose Birmingham University for my postgraduate studies because it’s a
really big – obviously big University and I like having a lot of choice of things
to do. There's a lot of – it’s not just the main curriculum that’s important for
me, it’s also outside activities that it’s got a lot of. It’s a very busy University –
there's always things going on. The main reason is probably because it was
the only University that did a really good Immunology and Immunotherapy
course for me for a Masters, and obviously looking at the programme details
and things it just really like took me in.
So after I graduate from this Masters course I'm hoping to become a research
assistant. That obviously entails working in a lab which I wouldn’t have known
I enjoyed until I started this course. I work in a lab at the minute. I've worked in
the Cancer Sciences Research Building for about 3 weeks as part of the
Masters course and I absolutely love it. And the course has also been really
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good at helping me apply to those kind of jobs, without which, this course I
wouldn’t have done, so it’s been really good.
I chose Birmingham for my postgraduate studies because the course details
of course for Immunology and Immunotherapy looked really, really, really
exciting, really interesting. The actual University itself is really big. There's
always loads of outside activities going on, so it’s not just your main
curriculum, there's loads of other – like student union activities going on all the
time. It’s also a really good University if you need any help like careers – the
careers here are amazing. They helped me with a job interview and
applications and things like that.
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