Three Years in Exeter: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Myself at Graduation Day, July 2026

⚠️ Disclaimer: 

All opinions, experiences, and criticisms shared in this post are entirely my own, based on my personal time as a student at the University of Exeter. They are subjective reflections only. This post is written for honest personal expression and discussion purposes. I do not claim every detail is objectively verified and have no intention to defame, harm, or make formal accusations against any person or institution. Readers should form their own conclusions. This is an exercise of personal expression and free speech.

Welcome back, folks. By the time you're reading this post, I'll have already graduated from university. For those of you who are new here, I studied for a BEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Exeter. Looking back on the past three years, its certainty been one hell of a ride. In this post, I'm going to share what it's like to study at the University of Exeter, and well, what university life is like in general.

The Beginning

After my gruelling A-levels in Sussex, a starry-eyed me headed west to continue my journey in Electronics. Some of you may already know that Exeter wasn't really my first choice, per se, but I ended up there anyway, so I might as well make myself comfortable. Well, at least attempt to, given that the university is a 15-minute hike from my accommodation and the city centre is 30-minutes. 

I had heard lots of great things about Exeter while I was studying for my A-levels, particularly about how beautiful the city is and how close it is to the coast. And frankly, I don't disagree with any of that. Exeter is gorgeous, especially when the sun is out. That said, I'd argue it suffers from the same kind of problem as the UK in general, which I'll get into in more detail later. In any case, I arrived, and my first impressions were alright - just a typical British city. The bus service, however, is a massive joke. It would be a miracle if a bus showed up on time, or at all in some cases. I don't suppose the fancy new bus station can solve the unreliability of the service. I used to think that Metrobus was pretty crap, but you know what? It's alright in comparison.

Me and friends in a club, Nov 2023 (1st yr)

Me hosting the weekend anthems

I spent my first year in the international school, where I was required to take English alongside my regular modules. The only exception was Materials Science, as Electronics students did not take it in the second term (Not that it made my life any easier). I'd say my first year is the only year in which I actually got to have any sort of fun: clubs, pubs, travelling around, and so on. As for the course content for Electronics, around 80% had already been covered at A-level, perhaps in a bit more depth and with different ways of expressing the same equations or ideas.

A sketch I did for the concept presentation

Year 1 Project Presentation

I should point out that a surprisingly large number of my classmates didn't make it to second year. Some of them were clubbing almost every night, and others didn't meet the attendance requirements. Regardless, I met some amazing people, did a show on the campus radio (probably what pissed off half of Exeter's population) and did a project on point absorbers (a device that floats on top of the ocean and harvests tidal/wave energy). Now that I think about it, I find this project to be the most exciting out of the three main projects I did throughout my degree. Perhaps that's because I didn't have to do most of the writing. Lol indeed.

When it all goes pear-shaped

I was a Python (programming language) workshop leader as well

My second year is probably the most "exciting" year out of the three. Well, for all the wrong reasons. I'm not quite sure where to start, to be honest. There're quite a few things that I'd like to cover here, and most of them still feel tangled together when I try to sort them out. But anyway, here goes.

One of the PCBs of my 2nd year project

It began with the quiet assumption that I’d somehow mastered university after my first year. Well, I hadn’t. The further I progress, the more I realise just how much there is still to learn. One of the clearest examples was a group project I was a part of. For most of the term I was practically the only person from our group who ever showed up in the lab. I’d see certain teammates casually posting on social media about how they hadn’t attended a single lab or lecture, as if that were something to be proud of. I’d be lying if I said other groups didn’t have the same problem, but mine took it to another level. They only bothered to appear the week of the deadline, after the entire group received a sternly worded email from the professor. By then it was far too late. We ended up with one entire subsystem completely inoperative, and of course, it was the easiest one to get right. The whole thing still feels like a small, pointless failure that didn’t need to happen. It's just so not worth losing marks over the easiest subsystem. What made it worse was that the other teammates were actually my friends. There's only so much I could do to get them into the lab. What was I supposed to do? Shout at them? One member even tried to pin the whole mess on another, and I honestly don’t think either of them cared all that much in the end. Anyway, the project took a slight toll on our relationship. Not that it matters much to me, but it's such a shame how it all turned out. 

What followed afterwards was probably the most frustrating part of the whole experience. There's this module called Entrepreneurship 2 (Got nothing to do with electronics, luckily the course structure changed afterwards so that only students on the management path would take this module in the future) used a peer review system to assess each member's contribution to the project. Unfortunately, the form could be edited by everyone in the group, which quickly became a source of disagreement. Some of the comments suggested that I had contributed very little to the project, despite the fact that there are clear records of the work I had completed. I raised my concerns with the head of module, but I was advised not to dwell on the matter (guy shouted at me saying I shouldn't argue. That's a first for me though.) and to concentrate on completing the project instead. Things became even more complicated when I later discovered that comments I had written on the peer review form had been altered before submission. Although the issue was eventually discussed with tutors and supervisors, I understood that the process relied heavily on trust and will simply crumble to bits when that trust broke down. In the end, I decided to stop pursuing the matter, keep a careful record of my own work, and focus on getting the project over the finish line.

What bothered me most, though, wasn't the group member who decided to play around with the peer review form. There will always be people like that. What bothered me was the response to it. When I asked how this system could possibly be considered fair when everyone could freely edit comments and marks before submission, I was met with a few seconds of silence followed by a defence of the process itself rather than an answer to the question. One of the lecturers even made a rather personal remark, which certainly didn't improve my opinion of the whole ordeal. The experience is a perfect reflection that learning and teaching are two entirely different skills. Someone can be an outstanding researcher, publish influential papers, and lead groundbreaking work, and still struggle to teach effectively. After all, schoolteachers are expected to undergo extensive training (e.g. PGCE, Postgraduate Certificate in Education) before stepping into a classroom, whereas university lecturers often receive comparatively little preparation for the teaching side of the job. Perhaps my experience was simply an unfortunate exception, but it did leave me wondering whether universities place too much emphasis on academic achievement and not enough on the ability to communicate, support, and teach.

I was also asked whether I regret the decision of "challenging the authority", and the answer, will always be no.

Third time's the charm, eh?

One of the early refresher lectures at the start of my 3rd year

Here comes the third year. Things got a bit more stressful and tough in my final year. Most of my social life has been traded with working on the final year project, which is an investigation or development of a microcontroller-based waveform generator for quantum sensing systems. The project was given to me by my project supervisor, and it went way beyond anything I'd learned before. But luckily, I didn't need to understand quantum physics to complete it. Unlike what most people were doing, my project was extremely practical. I had to go to the lab almost every day and work on the prototype, which meant spending a ridiculous amount of time staring at circuit boards, oscilloscopes and computer screens trying to figure out why something wasn't working. Sometimes it was genuinely interesting; other times it was just frustrating. I'd spend hours trying to find a problem, only to discover that it was caused by something incredibly stupid.

My 3rd year project prototype

The project was also surprisingly expensive, at least by university standards. Given that the university is extremely petty and counts things like shipping costs towards the project budget, it got very close to the limit even though none of the electronic components themselves were particularly expensive. There were also plenty of other little things that made the project more difficult than it needed to be. For starters, my supervisor gave barely useful advice during meetings, blew me off for meetings, told me that something I'd done was correct only for it to later turn out to be wrong, and left some absolute nonsense in the project feedback. It's also worth noting that there are two markers for the final project. The second one left some feedback (it's more like a summary of what I did, to be honest) that looks suspiciously like it was generated by AI.

Again, this really goes back to the point about the people this university hires and the system itself. The fact that somehow a PhD trumps a PGCE, and that academics can automatically teach a class after receiving relatively minimal training, is quite laughable. Having a PhD simply means that someone is highly qualified in their particular field of research, but that doesn't automatically make them a good teacher. Like I said earlier, the two are completely different skills. I don't expect every lecturer to be a professional teacher, but I do expect them to at least be able to give useful feedback, communicate properly with students (they use "misunderstanding" as an excuse a lot. Quite a neat trick to deal with international students, isn't it?) and, at the very least, know what they're talking about when they're giving advice on a project. But what do I know about teaching? Perhaps that's too much to ask.

Okay, Enough Moaning

Me and my friends in graduation day

Regardless, I don't think the main lesson I took from these two years was that university is terrible (a scam...? maybe.). There were plenty of things I enjoyed, and I learned a huge amount, both in and out of the lab. What I did learn, however, is that a university is only as good as the people and systems that make it work. You can have brilliant researchers, impressive facilities and carefully designed courses, but none of that means much if the people running them can't communicate properly with students, give useful guidance, or design course systems that actually work when things go wrong. Perhaps that's one of the less obvious things nobody tells you about university: you're not just learning your subject. You're also learning how to deal with imperfect people, imperfect systems, and occasionally having to figure things out for yourself when the people who are supposed to help you don't quite know how to. 

The electronics lab manager (right) and myself (left)

Despite all of that, there were still plenty of things that made university worthwhile. I've met some amazing people, gained valuable advice from industry professionals, and had opportunities that I probably wouldn't have had anywhere else. I got involved in things outside of my degree, met people from completely different backgrounds, and had the chance to work on some genuinely interesting projects. I'd like to dedicate this paragraph to the electronics lab manager, who wishes to remain anonymous online. If there was ever a problem with a circuit, a piece of equipment, some software, or pretty much anything vaguely related to engineering, he was usually the person most of us would go to. He has an incredible amount of practical knowledge and somehow seems to know something about almost everything, not just electronics but other engineering disciplines and computer science as well. More importantly, he was often able to give me practical advice that I simply couldn't get from anywhere else. There were plenty of occasions where I would explain what I was trying to do, and he'd immediately point out something I'd overlooked or suggest a much more sensible way of doing it. It's also a prime example of there is a huge difference between knowing the theory and actually knowing how to make something work. I'm not sure how many lecturers would have that same level of hands-on knowledge, but I'm certainly glad there was someone around who did.

Anyway, I think I've said enough about the things that went wrong. University wasn't just bad experiences, frustrating projects and questionable decisions by the people running things. There were plenty of good times too, and those are probably better shown than explained. So rather than continuing to moan about everything that went wrong, here are some more of the people, places and moments that made those three years worthwhile.

Me and my friends at Exmouth

Me and my friends hosting the weekend anthems

Me with the Grand Challenges Team, Jun 2025

Prof. Mustafa Aziz was the only professor to teach our cohort across all three years

Napoleon the campus cat

Looking through all these photos, it's quite easy to forget about the things that went wrong, and perhaps that's the point. University wasn't perfect, and there were certainly moments when I wondered why I was putting myself through all of this, but those aren't the only things that I'll remember. I'll remember the people I met, the ridiculous conversations, the trips, the things I got involved in, and all the little moments that made the three years what they were. If anything, that's probably the biggest lesson I've taken away from university. Things don't have to be perfect for an experience to be worthwhile. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of crap along the way, I've only listed one or two major ones here and there a whole lot more to share, but there was also plenty of good stuff. And when I look back at these three years, I'll try and keep the latter close to my heart. 

Anyway, what's your university experience like? If you went to university, did any of this sound familiar, or was your experience completely different? And if you never went to university, what was your experience of further education like? I'd love to hear your stories, so feel free to leave a comment below and let me know! As always, enjoy the rest of your week, and I'll see you in the next post.

P.S. To all my friends who are reading this, I'm more than blessed to have had you along for this three-year journey. I wish you nothing but the absolute best for the future.