Eleanor’s Final Year Blog: The Homestretch

Hi Guys,

This week was the week that the sun officially arrived in Manchester, its super hot outside, skies are blue, there is not a cloud in the sky… and everyone is inside doing their dissertation or lab report (Yay final year!) Despite the high-stress levels in the day the majority of people still find time to let down their hair in the evening where every bar in Fallowfield with outside seating is filled to the brim with students. If there are two things that students react well to, it’s sunlight and alcohol. Personally, I also have the major advantage of living right by Platt fields, which means that when I eventually do surface from my project write-up I get to take my lunch breaks soaking up the sunshine in the park.

Breaks in the park = Heaven

Speaking of lab reports, 35 pages of portfolio later and I am on the home stretch. All the extra work that I put in at Easter has paid off as I’m set to finish a few days before the deadline. My housemates have all had similar projects that finish at the same time which means that this weekend is going to be… celebratory to say the least. I’m not going to lie; this Science communication project has taken a lot of hard work, but I’m really happy with the result. I would 100% recommend doing one if you aren’t too keen on working in a lab. I’ve learnt how to film and edit videos, use software that didn’t even know existed, and learnt how to communicate science to a whole load of different audiences. If that doesn’t persuade you to do one then I should probably mention that it is a also huge CV booster as you have to manage project yourself, set your own deadlines, and you pretty much get creative freedom over how you want to pursue each piece.

Alice Copperwheat’s 2nd Year Blog: Fantastic Field Courses!

Another long break between blogs but mainly due to my dissertation taking over my time! For life science students the dissertation is in the second year but it is only 9 pages long. However this still takes up lots of time, because once you get going with research you findlots and lots and it is hard to sift through what you actually need. I am glad it is done but I am sad to have to say goodbye to my topic of Finding Nemo. This week was the last week before the Easter holidays, which also meant the last day of being an ambassador. It has been a really good experience because it is an easy way to earn money, you meet lots of new people and you end up learning lots about the university. I thoroughly recommend it to everyone and I hope I can do it again when I am back of placement.

The most important thing I have done this week however, is book my flights to Costa Rica for my field course. A group of us have decided to book together and go out a couple of days early and stay for a couple of weeks after the actual field course. We did a lot of searching and got it for about £100 less than other people. The field course is just over two weeks and is based upon tropical ecology and conservation. The main aim is to look at the biotic and climatic differences of the country. Whilst we are there I am looking forward to visiting the amphibian research centre and the sloth sanctuary. The sloth sanctuary is where a former student, Becky Cliffe, did a placement and is now studying her PhD. She got lots of publicity from her placement, which even resulted in an article in BBC Wildlife magazine and a TV documentary. Whilst on the field course we are mainly travelling down the east coast and because of this my group of friends are looking at travelling around the west coast and other parts of the country. We are arriving a bit early, as this will allow us to get accustomed to the country and do a bit of site seeing in the capital city. In the two weeks after we will be partaking in a volunteering project where we will learn to surf in the day and help with turtle conservation at night. We are also looking at visiting volcanoes, zip wiring and staying with native families. This flexibility of the field course allows us to organise our own flights in order to travel as much as we would like after.

Last year I was also lucky enough to go on a field course, that time to South Africa. It was for 2 weeks during the Easter holidays and the university organised most things, which took a lot of the pressure off.  The aim of the field course was to study animal behaviour and my group chose to study spiders. We chose a particular species that was abundant there and looked at aspects such as body length and web size. It was an amazing experience and another thing that I would again recommend. I met lots of new people and got to experience life on a real project which gave me good practice in writing lab reports.

That is all for now,

Over and out

A x

Alice’s Second Year Blog: Placement of Perfection

 

Yippeeeeee! I’ve done it, I’ve sorted out my placement. Next year I will be living in Greece, working for Archipelagos- institute of marine conservation, and working on a documentary film production placement. But it hasn’t always been an entirely smooth ride…

The first stage was writing my CV. Stupidly I had somehow deleted my CV from a few years ago which meant starting from scratch. Don’t delete your CV, ever!! I had to dig around and find all my certificates, which took a long while, but finally it was done. Next I began to worry because all of the placements that I seemed to get emails for were based in labs, and as a zoologist this wasn’t for me. I began to do some research and spoke to some current placement students. There seemed like an amazing opportunity in the Seychelles, but I knew I couldn’t apply until February so I decided to keep looking incase of some others. After speaking to my placement mentor, I applied to the same placement she had done, an amazing opportunity in science media. This placement seemed perfect for me because it would give me the start in science media that I need. It was based in the UK, something I had not considered, and it had a salary of around £17, 500, something I could not turn down! However, it was not meant to be and unfortunately I got rejected. Maybe it was a blessing, because if I had not lost that placement I may not have the amazing opportunity that is now laid out in front of me.

I found out about Archipelagos because a student is currently placed there. They have a range of different placements from marine conservation to fine art to law placements. You don’t even have to be a science student. The documentary film production placement jumped out at me and I had to apply. They approved my application and I had a very nice interview with one of their scientists. A week later I got that all-important confirmation email!

A lot of you may be looking at doing a placement year, so here are a few pointers. First of all, I didn’t apply for a placement year via UCAS. In my interview, I got offered the chance to be enrolled on the course without changing my grade offer. If this happens to you, TAKE IT! Secondly, in order to continue onto the course in 2^nd year, you need an average of 60% or higher, so work hard. Thirdly, if in your first year you decide that you actually would like to be on the course, this is easily arranged, many of my friends chose this.  Or on the other hand, it is also easy to opt off. Finally, I strongly advise everyone to go for a placement. It looks amazing on your CV, and will definitely help you get jobs later in life. Furthermore, it will mature you and give you life experiences others wont have had. 

Over and out

A x