Hi everyone! My name is Simona and I have been nominated as Women in Science Ambassador for Loughborough University’s School of Science. I started this new journey of my life this year, after choosing to study Natural Sciences at Loughborough University.

It is my first time moving out of home and, as with many others, I also felt overwhelmed when I was thrown into this new world. Moving out of home was both scary and exciting. My biggest challenge was to find the will to get out of the comfortable bubble that I have created over the years with my family, where everything and everybody was known. I find it rather odd that one needs to face challenges and leave their personal comfort zone in order to grow and at the same time our natural animal instinct makes us want to never leave our safe place to avoid danger. It is also true that human nature is made of many contrapositions.

I still remember how I felt when I boarded the train to get to Loughborough. I was not nervous, I was quite enthusiastic for this new start. I remember creating various scenarios in my mind about how my life at university would be and looking around to see if there might have been other students of Loughborough like me. By the time I was finally alone in my new room, the silence created by the absence of my family, made me feel like I wanted to run back home. My overall mood had turned upside down just like the weather here, which I have learned not to trust after getting soaked by the rain during my induction day. Later, I found out that many students felt like me and this reassured me. It is normal to feel nostalgic from time to time, luckily on our side we have technology to help us reach our family at any time. At the same time Loughborough University does a great job in keeping our minds busy with all the different events.

I chose Natural Sciences because it allowed me to follow my passion for chemistry and while retaining my love-hate relationship with mathematics. If I had left behind mathematics, I would have felt quite nostalgic. It is like with siblings, you find them annoying, they might be the cause of headache, they might poison you while trying to come up with new recipes, but you cannot abandon them. I cannot pinpoint the time or the day when my passion for chemistry began. I have been very lucky to have had fantastic teachers for chemistry throughout my academic journey and this has played a big role in driving me towards chemistry.

About Simona

“My name is Simona Mohammad and I am the second Women in Science Ambassador. My nationality is Italian and my ethnicity is Bengali. I have lived my whole life in Italy and just moved to England a few years ago. I have come to Loughborough to study Natural Sciences. As the Women in Science Ambassador I hope to involve more women in choosing STEM pathways and contribute towards enriching the diversity in Loughborough.”