Category: Undergraduate

Third-year Pharmacy student Calebtina Peprah received a scholarship through the Student Potential Fund. She has shared with us the positive impact this had made on her studies and her appreciation to the donors for their support.

I am the first person in my family to go to university and was determined to make a bold step and attend university. I have always wanted to pursue a career in healthcare, and I could not hide my joy when I got accepted at the University of Brighton. It was a dream come true.  

Hi, I’m Eva and I’m a third year Pharmacy MPharm student. Here is my experience of studying at University of Brighton – from lectures and work experience to getting support, my favourite places, social life, living in Brighton, and tips on making and saving money.

• How I found university different from college
• Getting work experience at uni
• The support I’ve had at uni
• My favourite places on campus
• My uni activities outside class
• What I love about living in Brighton
• My tips on earning and saving money at uni

How I found university different from college

I struggled with the jump from GCSE to A-level at college and got really stressed that the only form of assessment was one set of exams. Uni isn’t like that; there are multiple forms of assessment including exams, coursework, and OSCEs (live spoken exams, role play style), assessed at different points throughout the year. This takes some of the pressure off the end-of-year exams and gives me a better idea of how I’m doing academically throughout the year.

Hi I’m Eva and I’m in my third year of my pharmacy degree. A typical day in the life of a pharmacy student varies depending on what day of the week it is! The Pharmacy MPharm degree is mostly taught using a mixture of lectures, labs and workshops. Lectures are what most people think of when they imagine uni – lots of people sitting in a lecture theatre taking notes while the professor talks. Labs are where we do scientific experiments, and workshops are where we get to practice our clinical skills.

Sometimes we’ll have placements too, where we spend a few days in a pharmacy, shadowing the workload of a pharmacist. Normally, we’ll either have one three-hour lab, one three-hour workshop, or two to six hours of lectures in a day; and we usually only have three or four days a week at uni, so I tend to work or study on my days off.

Today I had a lab, so I woke up early and made sure I got to Huxley Building on Moulsecoomb campus ten minutes before 9am – if you miss the safety briefing, you won’t be let in! I also made sure I had my lab coat and goggles with me, which should be worn at all times in the lab. I’m in the third year, so this lab was one of a series of four sessions as part of a group project where we make a product from scratch.

My group’s product was curcumin sunscreen, so we started by researching what formulations would be best for a sunscreen. We decided on a cream, as we thought a lotion wouldn’t provide enough coverage, and ointment would be too greasy. We had to think back to the labs we had in first year and remember the ingredients and method for making cream – good thing I kept all my notes!