On this day, I was in my university campus back in Bangladesh. And I had just completed my application processes for IMFSE.
And today, after a whole year, I am already in my second semester and the second university as a part of IMFSE cohort 2019-2021.
It is definitely an amazing experience to be able to be a student of these many top universities. We spend one semester in one university, so our time in each campus is quite limited and rushed. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get the essence of being a student in these different campuses in different countries. I loved Edinburgh and the campus of the University of Edinburgh, where I studied in the first semester. I haven’t yet got the chance to explore Lund University campus and the city itself. The first part of second semester is quite busy. But so far I am loving this place too and can’t wait to explore around. I hope I will be able to experience being at the last university campus in Ghent 😀
In this moment, I wanted to present just how diversified IMFSE is. We all come from different countries, having our undergrad degree from one of the best universities there. And I think, that place is very important to each of us, considering we spent a fairly good amount of our lives being a part of these universities. As an international student, we all represent our own country and the university we came from.
So, I collected pictures from my classmates about their universities, because that place paved the path for us to be “here” today.
P.S. The photos are in alphabetic order 😛
BANGLADESH University of DhakaBELGIUM Katholieke Universiteit LeuvenBRAZIL Universidade Federal de Mato GrossoCANADA Dalhousie UniversityCHINA Nanjing Tech UniversityCHINA Northeastern UniversityCOLOMBIA Universidad Industrial de Santander (Industrial University of Santander)CROATIA University of ZagrebEGYPT Ain Shams UniversityGHANA Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and TechnologyKAZAKHSTAN Kazakh-British Technical UniversityPAKISTAN National University of Sciences & TechnologyPAKISTAN Pakistan institute of Engineering and applied SciencesPHILIPPINES University of Santo TomasRUSSIA Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic UniversitySRI LANKA University of MoratuwaSWEDEN Örebro UniversityVENEZUELA Simón Bolívar University
Disclaimer: I double-checked every word. Still if there’s any mistake, I hope you will forgive me 😦
Maybe I should put references to the photos to avoid plagiarism, but I am too lazy to do that here 😦 But thanks to anyone who captured these awesome photos 😀
It was real fun collecting the pictures from everyone. I got to know a lot about their universities too. Great learning 😀
I really enjoyed my time in the wonderful city that is Ghent, but I wonder what would have happened if I chose a different path at any point in my journey here. Perhaps if I had made a different decision about even something seemingly minor, my whole experience in Ghent would have changed. Therefore, I have decided to create this blog post in the form of a “choose your own adventure” story (yes, you read correctly). For those of you not familiar with this, firstly – why on earth haven’t you seen the Black Mirror film “Bandersnatch” on Netflix??? And secondly, a choose your own adventure story is when a story and it’s outcome are altered depending on the choices you make. Hope you enjoy making your own story and guessing where my story went!
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. It’s 5am and your alarm goes off, which leaves you about an hour and a half before you have to leave for the airport. Plenty of time to get ready and do some final checks before jetting off on your adventure to Ghent to begin your International Masters of Fire Safety Engineering course. However, deciding to pack so last-minute and therefore only getting four hours of sleep means that waking up just now does not seem like such a fun thing to do, and you’re tempted to just get a few more minutes of sleep before heading off.
Do you:
A – Get out of bed? (go to 1)
Or
B – Hit the snooze button (go to 2)
1. Ah, wise choice my friend. After cramming in as much as physically possible into your suitcase, and after a teary goodbye to your family (but an even tearier goodbye to your pets) you make it through airport security and you’re on your way. Hurray! (go to 3)
Miss you guys 😥
2. Oh no! You slept in too late and missed your plane! You decide that maybe just staying at home would be easiest and you become a hermit for the rest of your days, talking to a pineapple you’ve carved a face into, wondering what could have been if you had completed your IMFSE degree.
THE END.
3. You arrive at Charleroi Airport, to the south of Brussels and you make your way to get a ticket for the bus going directly to Ghent. You see a ticket desk with very long queues, but you can also see an available ticket machine.
Do you:
A – Buy your ticket at the desk (go to 4)
Or
B – Save time and buy your ticket at the machine (go to 5)
4. The queue goes down a lot quicker than you had expected it to and in no time you’re on your way directly to Ghent. You leisurely arrive at the housing office who give you your keys to your student dorm and you even have the afternoon free to explore some of Ghent and try some delicious Belgian chocolate. Yum! (go to 6)
Beautiful is an understatement
5. You try to get on the bus to Ghent but get redirected to a different smaller bus which takes you to a train station. After a lot of wandering, you realise that this isn’t even Brussels train station which you originally thought it was – it’s Charleroi train station! After an intervention of a lovely member of staff who guides you to where you need to go, and two stressful trains later, you arrive five minutes before the housing office closes – just in time to receive your keys. By the time you’ve dropped your bags off, the supermarkets are closed and you’re too tired to look for a takeaway, so you go to sleep hungry and exhausted. Not the best start to your time in Ghent. (go to 6)
6. A week later, you arrive at the Campus Boekentoren and head to the building where your first class is. You see on your timetable that you should enter via the street “Josef Plateaustraat” to get to the room, but surely it won’t matter if you enter from the closer street “Rozier”? After all they both lead to the same building.
Do you:
A – Go via “Rozier” (go to 7)
Or
B – Go via “Josef Plateaustraat” (go to 8)
7. “Where am I?” you think to yourself as you get lost in the maze that is the Plateau Building. After what feels like years of searching, you somehow arrive at the Belfry of Ghent in the city centre. “How did I end up here?” you cry just before the gilded dragon swoops down from the top of the Belfry tower and eats you. His favourite snack is lost and disorientated students.
THE END.
8. Phew! You made it just in time for class to start. You take out your pen and paper and prepare yourself for the first of many interesting and inspiring lectures you will take here at Ghent. (go to 9)
9. It’s now the next weekend and your friends have suggested you go to Bruges. You excitedly agree to go but there is an argument in the group chat about whether to take the train or adventurously cycle there. After much discussion, you end up with the deciding vote.
Do you:
A – Take the train (go to 10)
Or
B – Take your bikes (go to 11)
10. The train arrives and it’s a little crowded (to put it mildly). It seems that everyone in Belgium has decided to make the day trip to Bruges today. However, the train journey is not as long as you thought it would be, and you end up having a fabulous day with friends visiting historic sights and eating waffles. You can tell that your time in Belgium is going to be full of wonderful memories such as this and you’ve made some wonderful friends to share them with. You eventually pass all your exams with flying colours and are awarded “IMFSE student of the year”.
THE END.
Belfry +Waffles = A good day out
11. In the two hours you have spent cycling it has not stopped raining once. This isn’t the day trip you quite expected. You and your friends end up walking around Bruges with completely soaked clothes and when you finally arrive home you develop an awful cold for the rest of the semester, so bad that you struggle to talk and end up failing your oral exams because of it. However, that does mean you have to stay in Ghent longer to re-sit them and that’s not all bad…right?
Hello Everyone … It is already almost time to start a new semester. If you lost me, I am here – happy and inspired – I survived the third semester. Probably the toughest and most stressful semester in IMFSE (so far). We had so many classes that most of the time, we did not even have time to cook (much gratitude to UGent student cafeterias).
Although it was a heavy loaded semester, it was also a content-saturated and project-intensive semester. We not only learned new content from lectures but also got to apply whatever we learned in the group projects. The group projects were formed by combining local and international master students together. This was an excellent opportunity to mingle with the local students as well. Through projects, we not only learned many new concepts but also learned new software and refreshed our memories with some previously used ones. I will post more about our exciting projects later.
Along with several projects and individual assignments, several trips were arranged by our lecturers to give us an essence of how the theories taught in class are applied in real life. One of the trips was to see real-life applications of detection and suppression systems in buildings where multimillion art is restored and collected. Then, we also had a visit to a firefighting training academy with FSE based Firefighting class. This was particularly interesting to visualize the previously-studied fire dynamics phenomena in real life.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
But do not think that we did not have time for anything else. Being busy bees does not mean we did not give time for other activities. In between, we went to several ESN parties/events, visited Amsterdam, had a small birthday celebration, and organized many dinners together. Overall, I could say that this was a very productive semester.
Now, it is time to start a new semester after long and enjoyable holidays.
IMFSE 