I recently went back to Imperial College. Whilst, I’ve been back many times since I graduated, this was the first time that I was returning to stand in front of an audience to present my research. I was giving a talk about trading FX using Reuters News data with Turnleaf Analytics inflation forecasts at a joint Thalesians and Imperial MathSoc event in the Blackett building, which houses the Physics department. The audience was mixed between practitioners and students.
Whilst all the lectures from my university course, Joint Mathematics and Computer Science, were in the adjoining Huxley building, I do have some recollections of walking through Blackett. One particular memory was seeing the wall which housed the photos from the various faculty members, which was occasionally joined by an unofficial photo, in an appropriately matching frame, of Mr T. I unfortunately couldn’t find the various stories I had previous read about this in the online archives of Felix, the student newspaper.
Much of the Imperial campus is surprisingly similar these days, give and take the addition of a building here and there. That intersection between what is a familiar place with a different time can sometimes feel somewhat odd, and provoke some reflection. However, despite being a reflective mood before reaching the lecture theatre, I was very pleased at the end of the event, seeing that the students at Imperial seem just as inquisitive and curious about the world, as my group was all those years ago.
After any lecture I get questions from the audience. Some can be more technical questions, whilst others can be more general often about career advice. I have to admit, technical questions about a talk tend to be the “easier” to answer. You either know the answer, or you don’t.
The “advice” questions are always far more challenging to answer. If there’s one thing that I know far better today, than when I was at Imperial, it’s that the things I really don’t know, far outweigh those that I do know and indeed, I had some curious notions back in my student days. Thinking back, my track record concerning predictions about my path ahead from Imperial proved to be totally wrong. One of these included the idea that I would somehow retire around the age of 30… Even if this was pre-GFC and Lehman, I have no idea where that misplaced feeling of self-belief came from at the time! Maybe that’s the magic of starting out in life, you believe you can do anything – and it’s a feeling I try to hang on to even today, even if it is more tempered with the feeling of realism…
One question a student asked a question, which I found particularly difficult to answer. He asked what would be my advice in terms of making the best of his time at Imperial. Despite all the proclamations that you tend to read these days on LinkedIn and social media (I assume to get likes and clicks), that university is not valuable for the future, I would really disagree with that. Yes, the opportunities to learn are far wider these days because of online content, and they can be extremely valuable. Indeed, I do a bit of part time Python teaching on the online QDC. The financial costs of university are also much more today.
However, university can mould you as a person, in terms of the way you think and in so many other ways, which you only realise later. Of course, I should’ve have said this in my answer, but I really didn’t think of these points at the time! Instead, I mentioned the usual stuff you might expect, being at a good university like Imperial gives you advantages, but you still need to work hard, apply to lots of graduate jobs (statistics, right!) etc. to get ahead (and of course there’s the element of luck).
However, this wasn’t the first thing I mentioned. Without any thinking and virtually as a reflex, my first bit of advice to him, is that you should make friends at university. It really is that simple, make friends! After all these years, that’s the most valuable thing I can think of which Imperial gave me and I’ve come to realise this more and more, with the passage of the years.
What would you have said, as advice to students today? Please feel free to chip in the comments!
(I guess everyone can probably guess which of my photos above was during my recent talk at Imperial! However, I would be interested to see if anyone can guess where I took the photos of the birds and sea, which are taken from many of the Imperial Photosoc trips I went on over the years. The blue photo was taken during a photo shoot which we did, and had forgotten about until browsing through my photos today.).