Work Experience in the ACRC
In June, we hosted a school pupil as part of her work experience. Here, she tells us about her week with us.
We asked Juliet to interview a number of our researchers, to broaden her understanding of what a career in research looks like. The interviews have been collated and can be found here.
I have really enjoyed doing the interviews and learning about all the different jobs within the ACRC. I didn’t realise that there would be such a variety of careers so it definitely helped me to understand all the different possibilities. It was also interesting to learn about different career paths and allowed me to take some of the pressure off making a decision about what I want to do because most people I’ve talked to have had a variety of different jobs. Interviewing people forced me to ask questions which is something I wouldn’t normally have the confidence to do. It also made it easier to find out more about them because I didn’t have to think of questions on the spot and it allowed me to compare different people’s experiences.
I loved the opportunity to visit the lab it was really interesting and it was experience a completely different environment from the ACRC which helped the week feel less repetitive.
Meeting new people every day definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone but everyone here was really friendly and welcoming which definitely helped me feel less anxious.
I didn’t mind doing more mundane tasks like laminating or making spread sheets, it actually helped to make the days less repetitive and gave me a break from typing up the interviews, I wouldn’t have minded doing more of these sort of tasks.
I enjoyed the variety of meetings I attended, it was nice to see the different aspects of people’s jobs. I preferred attending online meetings because it was less daunting when there were fewer people in the room.
Something I wish I had done this week was ask more questions about everything, for example how the ACRC is run, what each work package does, how the ACRC varies from other workplaces and why people chose to work here. Asking questions would have definitely help to maximise my experience and I wish I had been more confident and asked mine. I found it quite difficult to adjust to a new setting which definitely made it harder to gain confidence because everything was unfamiliar, however if I have the opportunity to do something like this again I will definitely learn from this experience and be more inquisitive.
Overall I had a great experience here, everybody was really helpful and friendly and I enjoyed all the different tasks I did. Thank you so much for this opportunity.