My favourite spaces on campus

As an Animal Behaviour student in Cambridge there are so many facilities to make use of on campus, both related to studying in your own time, and studying as part of your course. Here are my favourite places.

Library ground floor

I use the ground floor of the library a lot due to it having the group study zone. I find working in a group a lot easier than working independently sometimes, being able to bounce ideas off your peers and coming up with and creating new ideas together. If anyone on my course is struggling with a part of the work, we meet here and help each other make sense of it which I find very helpful. For me, group study is also easier to engage in than working on my own because I find that being in a group is appealing and interesting, as well as it being more fun! 

There are also private study rooms which can be booked out if you need a space for you and your classmates with less noise and fewer distractions. I have used this room for a group task assignment. My group needed to work together to create a poster about a certain topic which we'd be presenting in class. I felt like these rooms really let us focus on what each other had to say and allowed us to talk as freely as we needed without distracting anyone else in the library.

Open Access computer area

I use this area at least once a week because one of my modules is strongly dependant on Excel and the OneDrive so the range of computers in this area makes it easy for me to carry out this type of work.

It is open 24/7 which I think really helps me because sometimes I prefer to do my work later in the evening. Having the option to do so makes me feel less stressed, because I am not restricted to certain timeframes to get my work finished. It’s also helpful to not be at home where I can be more easily distracted.

Student social area

I use this area around twice a week because I love the feel I get from it. I usually sit in the seats on the left-hand side because I really like the way the seats are like booths. I normally write notes from my pre-recorded lectures in here and I always get so much work done due to feeling very relaxed and focused.

SuperLab

The SuperLab is the main classroom and area that I study in because this is where my face-to-face lectures and lessons are. Most of the lectures I attend are practical work and experiments which this room makes possible due to the wide range of science equipment. I love being able to study in here because of the size and space this room offers but you are still able to see PowerPoints and hear the teachers talking from anywhere in the room due to the set up (TVs and microphones). It’s a really clever room that allows for a lot of us to study and do our own thing, all at once.

Bayleigh is studying Animal Behaviour at ARU in Cambridge. To find out more about our degree courses and student life at ARU, book your place at an Open Day.