• A Week in the Life of a Student Intern

    Monday:

    Today was completely different to my usual Mondays as I was not working, instead I was GRADUATING! Honestly, I am still in disbelief at the whole day, I can’t believe that I have done it! The stress I felt the morning of was off the charts, even the slightest of traffic jams made me panic. I ended up having to get dressed in the car which as you can imagine was rather comical; “don’t drive past any lorries or buses for the next five minutes please Dad”.

    We finally arrived and I waddled out of the car to registration in ridiculously impractical heels (rooky mistake). After putting my cap and gown on I went to meet my friends and their families before heading over to the ceremony. The ceremony was fantastic, and I cried at least 3 times (I am an emotional wreck). I think this past year has just become so surreal to me because it wasn’t the final year that I had envisioned, and we have all gone through so much, but everything happens for a reason and I could not be prouder of myself and all of my fellow classmates.

    Photograph of Rachel at graduation.

    After the ceremony I had my pictures taken and then picked up my complimentary picnic basket from the front lawn – this was amazing. It was in the most gorgeous big black box and inside contained: prosecco, a selection of sandwiches and cakes, crisp, a sausage roll and a quiche. Edge Hill really did go above and beyond to ensure this was a special day. I spent the rest of the afternoon with my friends and our families dipping into the picnic and celebrating the past three years. We finished the day off by walking round Edge Hill’s beautiful campus together one last time and recounting all the amazing memories we made here together.

    Photograph of Rachel at graduation

    Tuesday:

    BACK TO WORK! It felt strange this morning going back to working for Edge Hill after spending the whole day on campus yesterday. I started the day by getting organised and speaking to colleagues to ensure that I hadn’t missed anything too important the day before. I then decided to complete a LinkedIn Learning course just to get me started and wake my brain up for the day. The weather was beautiful today, so I decided to put the parasol up and work in the back garden which really uplifted my mood – nothing better than a bit of sun to brighten your day!

    For the rest of the day I dived right in with accessibility, I wanted to make sure that I caught myself up on the hours that I missed by not working on Monday and therefore really threw myself into it. This became quite a long day for me as the module I was working on consisted of a lot of similar PDFs. However, I broke the day up with LinkedIn Learning and still felt great about the progress that I made. On to the next day!

    Wednesday:

    Today I woke up determined to finish the module that I have been working on. It consisted of over 60 PDFs all containing multiple pages and I very much wanted to complete it and move on to something else. With this motivation in mind, I woke up and dived straight into accessibility. PDFs are such a peculiar document to work on as some of them are incredibly easy and quick fixes, whilst others take up half of the day and still don’t quite reach 100% accessibility. Most files that I had been working on today needed tagging from scratch and then little things such as adding a title and the language. Depending on the size and content of the document these tasks vary in completion time. However, I went into the day with a strong mindset and the results of this showed through the amount of work that I got done – another proud day at the office.

    Thursday:

    This morning I began by finishing the module I had been working on. After doing most of the hard work yesterday I only had to work on a few extra things before this was finished which was a great feeling. Later on in the morning I attended the FAS catch up meeting with a few of my colleagues and the leaders of the internship. I always enjoy theses meetings as it gives me an insight into what everyone else is doing and allows me to address any problems that I have faced. It’s also a lovely way to stay connected with others and not fall into the trap of isolating myself whilst working from home.

    After the meeting I had half an hour till lunch, so I decided to start a LinkedIn Learning course and wait till after lunch to start a new module. After lunch I had a quick meeting with some other colleagues about blogs going forward and just discussed some new ideas as a group. I think it so much better sharing my ideas with others as it helps bring them to life and other people’s opinions really allows any ideas to reach their full and best potential.

    For the rest of the day I started on a new module, again focusing primarily on making PDFs throughout the module 85% or more accessible.

    Green plant beside white desk, with phrase on wall saying 'punch today in the face'.

    Friday:

    It’s Friday! Can’t believe we’ve made it through another week already, time is going so fast it’s crazy!

    Today I continued to focus on accessibility, however, because I had so much to do, I decided to break up the day with LinkedIn Learning. I decided to follow the routine of an hour and a half accessibility and then 30 minutes of a LinkedIn Learning course. I did this for the whole day, and it turned out to be productive!

    When it got to half an hour before finish, I completed my daily tasks such as my weekly reflection, daily reflection and time sheet. I am really looking forward to having these reflections to read over once I have finished the internship. At 5pm I closed my laptop and got myself ready for another exciting weekend – see you on Monday!

    By Rachel Roche (Student Intern)

    Photograph of Rachel Roche

    Laura

  • Reflective Entry – Week 6

    Introduction

    I cannot believe that we are already halfway through this internship. Everyone has been so great and welcoming, in fact I felt settled within the first week. This job has been the ride of a lifetime and we’re not even over yet! 

    As well as focusing on accessibility this week I will also complete a mid-way evaluation report, which is where Andrew (my colleague) and I wrote about how the internship is going in a mid-way evaluation report. This was an exciting start to the week, and I cannot wait to get started! 

    Monday 

    I always think it’s useful to have a morning routine to help start the day. Mine is a cup of coffee with whatever I fancy for breakfast. I usually have peanut butter on toast – they always make me feel energised. After I finished my toast, I logged onto my loan laptop to get started with the day. 

    A cup of tea next to a laptop

    The Learning Technology Development (LTD) Team provided every Student Intern with a timetable to help us all keep track of what sessions, training sessions and UniSkills webinars. The first session for today is “Whoa, we’re halfway there!” – Week 6 Catch Up Session”. This was an exciting opportunity as I got to catch up with everyone else on the internship and see how they are doing – everyone is doing fantastic and really enjoying the internship. By far my favourite part of it is interacting with the rest of the Student Interns and learning more technology skills along the way, especially with making Portable Document Format (PDFs) accessible. 

    One thing I love about this internship is that supervisors aren’t the only ones that organise the sessions. 3 other Student Interns hosted a wellbeing session. Keeping your well-being in tip-top shape is mega important, if you don’t then you have the chance of feeling sad and no one wants that! We need to happy to be able to do our best, have confidence in ourselves and most important of all being happy. 

    A PowerPoint slide showing different methods of how to keep your Emotional wellbeing healthy.

    I learnt a lot of useful strategies to keep my mental health and wellbeing healthy, such has having hobbies. It’s important to find a hobby to help give yourself a break because then you have found something that makes you happy. One of mine is playing Mario Kart 8 deluxe on Nintendo Switch, I’m good at that game! In fact, it’s what I usually do in my spare time it always cheers me up! 

    At the end of the day I logged off my PC and went straight on Mario Kart. I’m excited to what the rest of the week will bring. 

    Tuesday 

    After a great night sleep, I woke up and performed the usual morning routine, then I turned on my laptop and got to work on today’s tasks. Soon after Phase 2 began on the 14th of June 2021 I received templates for Microsoft PowerPoint, making our lives a lot easier when it comes to making the lectures and seminars accessible. Accessibility is important because it has become an extension to the equality act 2010. Therefore, any documents published after September 23rd of 2019 must be accessible. 

    Today I came across a bit of a challenge: Ally was not agreeing with a PowerPoint title. The title on the slide was in black text, however, Ally showed it as white text, to fix this error I had to perform research. Researching and problem solving is one of the best elements of this internship because I can learn new skills without the need of a training session. As a result, the research helped me fix this error, it turned out that Ally was using what the colour settings were set as in PowerPoint, not the font colour. After I fixed the colour contrast error it was resolved. 

    At the end of the day my technical skills have increased, and I feel good about that! You really do learn a lot in this internship and I’m loving it! 

    Wednesday 

    Every day working on this internship I learn a new skill and today was no different. There is one module that has a lot of PDFs in it to make accessible. The process of making PDFs accessible works a bit differently than making Microsoft documents accessible, every object like text and an image needs a tag, which is how PDFs identify the types of object in the document. This will take a lot of time to do manually, which is executed by using the reading order tool available in Adobe Acrobat Pro. However, Adobe Acrobat has an auto tag tool available which automatically tags the objects in the document, this will make my life a lot easier when making the PDFs accessible.

    Overall, I have been extremely happy with today as I was able to make 10 PDFs accessible and learnt a new skill. I logged off and relaxed with a cup of tea ready for the rest of the day. 

    Thursday 

    This day was a fun day of the internship! 3 Student Interns created a Student Intern Quiz, which was in a pub quiz style. The quiz had 8 themes: General, Superhero, Film, Edge Hill history, Accessibility, Celebrities, and guess the music. 

    The student intern quiz title slide
    An image showing one of the questions during the student intern quiz. Which is When was Edge Hill Founded, the correct answer is 1885.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the quiz; it was a nice break from improving the module areas. The very fact that other Student Interns made this quiz is astonishing, it makes it even more fun! My favourite theme was guess the music, I am a huge fan of music, it is my tool I use to improve my well-being. One of the songs in this theme is the most streamed song on the popular music platform Spotify, it is Shape of You by Ed Sheeran! I’m so happy that song came up because Ed Sheeran is one of my favourite singers. Overall, I placed 25th in the quiz which I am proud of, but I was there for the fun not to be competitive.  

    I spent the rest of the day working on the mid-way point evaluation with Andrew, which is currently going well. 

    Friday 

    Friday, the final day of the week has arrived. I am a bit sad that the week has nearly come to an end, everyone on this internship is so great and working on the mid-way evaluation form is also fun to work on too. 

    Speaking of which the mid-way evaluation form, it is an individual project evaluation for each small project within the large project and our professional development. My favourite part of the report is the individual project evaluation because we need to provide some data to show how hard we have worked. For the first project (accessibility) all but 1 module have been made 90% or more accessible, the other is 85% accessible. Andrew and I are both tremendously pleased with ourselves we have made such an impact on accessibility. 

    You might remember from my last blog I completed a LinkedIn Learning course called Communicating with confidence. I did that course because I wanted to improve my confidence with communicating to others. However, I still wanted to expand my communication skills, so I completed another one on communication called Interpersonal Communication. This course increased my skills of how to communicate with my colleagues and supervisors, as well as communicating in tricky situations. I can already tell this LinkedIn Learning course will help me a lot as I continue throughout through the final 6 weeks of the internship. 

    An image showing some of the Linked in course Interpersonal communication course. It says Effective communication is key to executive presence, meaning do you seem like a leader.

    After I handed in my mid-way evaluation form and completed the LinkedIn Learning course, I logged off my laptop with a smile on my face, looking forward to next week’s work.

    Please keep an eye out for Rachel’s blog coming out very soon, you won’t want to miss it! 

    By Simon Hackett-Evans (Student Intern) 

    Laura

  • The Perfect Work from Home Recipes: 15 Minute Breakfast Ideas to Help You Through the Day!

    Overnight Oats


    Overnight Oats are fabulous. They barely even fall into the category of 15 minute meals as you make them the night before AND that alone takes 5 minutes! This no-cook breakfast option leaves you with a healthy grab-and-go meal to enjoy throughout the week. Plus – it’s endlessly customisable! The beauty of them is that you can make them as simple or as fancy as you prefer. They are perfect for Student Interns who might get up no long before they are due to sign onto Teams for the day!

    For this overnight oat recipe, you will need 50g of rolled oats and 2 tablespoons and natural yogurt. This is the basic recipe. As extras, you could add some honey, 50g of mixed berries or some protein powder. The procedure is simple, in a mason jar, stir together the oats and yogurt. Leave the jar in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours. Add any other ingredients!

    ProOat Pancakes


    What is better than a heap of pancakes for breakfast? Healthy pancakes! Packed with protein and fibre, these are my personal go-to choice most days! By following this recipe, you can get your brain and body perfectly powered up to complete all the tasks at hand and smash your day.

    Just read this recipe and tell me it doesn’t look amazing.

    For the Pro Oat pancake recipe, use 50g of oats, 1 banana, half a teaspoon of baking powder, 1 scoop of protein powder and 70ml of any milk. To make this recipe, blend together all of the ingredients until the batter is smooth. Heat a non-stick pan for about 2 minutes. Add the batter to the pan in small circles and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side. Serve the pancakes with any toppings you wish!

    Shakshuka


    This Middle Eastern dish is perfect. Not only is it ridiculously delicious but it can also be made for breakfast, lunch or tea! It’s made from simple, healthy ingredients – Shakshuka literally means “a mixture” and the traditional version uses tomatoes, onions and spices as the base with eggs poached on top.

    Here is a recipe for shakshuka. You will need a medium sized onion, 1 diced red pepper, 4 garlic cloves, 2 teaspoons of paprika, 1 teaspoon of cumin, a tin of chopped tomatoes and 3 eggs. To create this meal, heat some oil in a large pan on medium heat. Add the chopped pepper and onions and cook for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and spices to this pan, when adding the chopped tomatoes, break them up with a large spoon. After this, make wells in the mixture and crack the eggs into them. Cover the pan and cook for 5-6 minutes.

    By Lydia Woods (Student Intern)

    Laura

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