Work Experience 2021
The ChARM research group welcomed sixth form students in July to complete work experience.
Here is what students have to say about us:
What did you do during the work experience week? What tasks did you complete, was the material challenging enough, did you learn anything new…
On the first day of our work experience, we were given the task of summarising information into a one slide PowerPoint presentation on any of the projects in the Child and Adolescent Resilience and Mental Health (ChARM) research group. We then presented this to our hosts, Lauren Cross, research assistant and Rasanat Fatima Nawaz, a PhD student. The projects that were chosen by each of us were: Help Overcome and Predict the Emergence of Suicide (HOPES), RESIlience Study, and Mindfulness for Adolescents and Carers (MAC). We were able to pick out the most important bits of information and present them in a way that strengthens our communication skills. We also limited the number of words that we include, reading the information carefully to gain an understanding as to what the aim of the research is. We learned how to pick and choose only relevant information to summarise. We were able to apply things we’ve learnt in our psychology lessons into these summaries and it was interesting to us how various fields of psychology end up relating to each other.
On the second day, we completed a task that involved teamwork, where we had to create a poster about how Covid-19 has affected mental health based on research by Lauren Cross, Research assistant at the Department of Psychiatry. We divided the tasks into 3 categories: Aims & Procedure, Statistical data, Evaluations & Conclusion. Doing these tasks improved our critical thinking skills.
On the third day, we learned how to stand out from the crowd, each of us made short paragraphs we can add to our personal statements. We also got feedback from them and made improvements.
During the last day we presented our personal future project that we want to run in our school to the ChARM research group meeting.
How will this work experience help you in the future? E.g. doing a study in school, career choices etc
The poster that we have done on the second day will be presented on the teacher bulletin and be used as an example for future work experience students. Due to this achievement, we have learned to be more confident, to ask questions, believe in ourselves and not to be over critical of our own work, which is an advantage and will help us in the future to be our best.
Having these skills is crucial and will help us greatly during both university and work life. Doing this work experience and hearing all the stories from the ChARM researchers has helped us understand that our progress in life will most likely not be as smooth as we want it to be but, in the end, everything will fall into place and we are going to achieve our goals.
As the original RESIlience Study fascinated us, we decided to team up and collaborate with a teacher to recreate the study in our school and look at how we can help those that go through a high amount of stress during exam season. We plan to help fellow students with the stress that they will experience during their exams and to measure their stress levels during our ‘safe group meeting’, a safe place in which students can express themselves openly and speak about their stress and dealing with pressure of completing school work.
Summarise your time with the Department of Psychiatry:
Rianna: This has been an amazing experience with such welcoming teachers and researchers and I hope to meet everyone again.
Fatima: Very interactive and interesting, doing tasks in between sessions kept me engaged in the program and helped me improve my skills constantly through the feedback I received.
Mihaela-Beatrice: The most engaging work experience that I have ever done and given the chance I would definitely do it again. Presenting my work in front of such a world class research group has helped with my confidence and I am now convinced that Psychiatry is definitely for me.
Other comments: All of us would 100% love to continue the program given the chance.
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