Hi I’m Yuqing, I’m a freshman in the SEED faculty majoring in BSc Planning and Real Estate. Over the course of one semester, I’ve gone from feeling lost to feeling at home at The University of Manchester, and the brand new facilities and genuine consideration for students have played a huge part in this. Next, I’m going to show you some of the facilities that I found particularly great while living and studying here.

The lecture room for PLAN10021

Firstly, as a current planning and property student, the environment of the classroom and the configuration of the classroom is something that I am very keen to experience. This is our usual classroom, equipped with a whiteboard with a large screen space and a dual-screen computer connected to a projector, so even if you are late for some personal reasons and sit in the back row, your eyesight will not be affected, and you will see the content of the class clearly.

Main library

I’m sure there are a lot of people who are concerned about how our library is working and if it’s as grand as they thought it would be. And does it have a large collection of books? The answer is yes. Most of the students choose to study in these two places, the main library and the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons.
Let’s start with the main library – it is one of the older ones and has a large collection of books to browse across a variety of subjects, and our library also offers online reading, which makes it very easy to cite literature when writing a paper. The main library also has up to five full floors of study rooms! You don’t have to worry about finding a place to study, and there are computers and printers on the ground floor, which makes life easier.

The public self-study area in Alan Gilbert Learning Commons

Then there’s the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons, a place for students to study 24 hours a day. There are study rooms, individual study rooms with computer whiteboards, group discussion rooms, and even a space capsule sleeping pod for students who stay up late to write their dissertations. I sometimes stay there alone and the user-friendly design makes me lose track of time.

And in this semester, my course introduced a new lecture ‘Applied project’ which is held at the highest floor of Simon building. A huge computer room was used by us.

The computer room for Applied Project

This classroom is often used as an exam room, so it is very large. In class, we all have a computer in front of us, and we can log in to our learning accounts at any time, use big software that can’t run on our own devices, similar to drawing and painting, and every computer works smoothly, which greatly improves the completion rate of our assignments. And you don’t have to worry about not being able to see the blackboard in a huge classroom. The walls of the classroom are lined with small televisions every few rows that are synchronized with the host’s computer, and it doesn’t matter if you can’t see the host’s computer in front of you. What fascinates me most about this course is that everyone has the opportunity to practice what the teacher is teaching, and there is a great sense of achievement after learning. I look forward to this class every week, and when I talk to my friends at other schools, they are surprised and envious to hear that we have such a classroom and facilities at our school.

Aquatics Centre

Finally, my favourite facility is our school’s sports centre – Manchester Aquatics centre. After the start of the second half of my first semester of my freshman year, my love for swimming immediately led me to purchase a gym membership for the swimming pool. The whole gym is open to the public but as a student at The University of Manchester I am eligible for a student discount. Inside the sports centre there is not only a swimming pool, but also a yoga studio, sauna, gym and equipment room, as well as a small food bar to recharge and hydrate after a workout. The sports centre is also a very clean and tidy place with bathrooms and changing rooms. It’s my favourite place to go outside of class.

The sports centre offers three pools, a small pool dedicated to the general public to go and work out, another pool dedicated to The University of Manchester students to train in, and a diving pool dedicated to University’s water polo team to train in. These facilities provide a wider range of sports programmes for students, enabling them to combine work and play outside of school hours and enriching their lives. When I talk to my friends about life after school, they are all, without exception, amazed by the facilities that our school has to offer.

All in all, these are the facilities that I am using in my student life. I hope that this information is helpful and shows my perspective on the tools that PPEM students use in their academic lives. Looking forward to meeting at the wonderful University of Manchester.

Written by Yuqing, current BSc Planning and Real Estate student at The University of Manchester

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