Last week drew to a close with a day at university for the Mid Placement Conference- nicely positioned at the end of month 10 of a 12-month placement.
The day gave all placement students a chance to re-group in familiar surroundings, discuss, chat and generally catch up with each other.
The day moved forward with inspirational talks and activities designed to collect the ideas and thoughts of what could be learned by going on placement and what skills could be brought back with us in our final year, the ‘key skills, teamwork and communication’ items raised their heads along with many other buzzwords.
Initially collected in the main hall, all placement students were then sent off to their tutor groups for more in depth discussions and to learn a bit more about our course mates placements. The Computing department had a grand total of seven.
Interestingly there were a lot of differences between each placement. Some students had gained positions in gaming companies, creative positions, development, even advertising. The placements ranged not only in discipline but also size and location, ranging from a 4 person team in Cheltenham to countrywide organisation with thousands of employees in multiple buildings. There is even one student on the other side of the globe, needless to say he wasn’t present at the conference.
Across all the presentations what seemed apparent is that we were all learning a lot, gaining new skills that weren’t involved on the university course, all of us having to adapt to whatever situation arose. For me, this cements my feelings towards taking a placement if you have the chance. No matter what it’s doing, you will gain skills in the real world of work that otherwise won’t be apparent until after university, you’ll learn the bits that the course can’t directly teach.
After having a catch up with various tutors there was a break for lunch for which the events students running the day put on a nice spread of sandwiches and drinks. It also gave them a chance to urge loitering students to fill in the feedback forms and enter the raffle, top prize being £40 Amazon voucher. Too good to ignore really, so pen in hand I filled everything out and passed it back to the team.
The afternoon schedule kicked off with information on the placement assignments and write up. Hopefully keeping a blog/diary and timesheets will be a useful resource when writing up my year’s experience. Being in the main hall, numbers had noticeably dropped, I suspect the SU and sun had taken a fair few hostages, so the next stage of the day was brought on a bit quicker.
Back in our tutor groups (down to 3) we were presented with what to expect coming back to the university in September and information about the dreaded dissertation. With departments and courses being reviewed and changed about, the overall message was that things would change…but maybe not yet…and in a good way. At present this doesn’t make much difference for us, but nevertheless, it was good to get an idea of what was happening to our course and department whilst away, so that was appreciated.
Last on the days agenda was the final thanks and prize draw, since I’d made the decision to enter, I couldn’t leave without checking- low and behold I was the 3rd prize winner of a £10 Amazon voucher, very handy!
With the conference now over, I caught up with some current third years and my tutors and sat enjoying the sun. This, I’m told, is how Friday afternoons are generally spent in the final year – something to look forward to.
