My name is Amber Berry and I have anxiety. This sounds like a weird confession, or a secret coming out. The word anxiety itself I think is a word that scares a lot of people, purely because they don’t understand it. Or it’s the other end and they know exactly what it is and that’s exactly what scares them. I don’t think it has to be any of these things, it’s simply a small part of me. Not a part of who I am, but still its apart of my being. It’s a part of my being that brings struggles and I was scared that these struggles would affect my performance during the student internship. However, the internship has done something that I didn’t expect. It’s helped me improve. In this blog post, I’m hoping to detail how and that if anyone sees this who is interested in similar opportunities but is worried of being overwhelmed. I want to reassure you that it isn’t as immense or intimidating as it might seem.

People. Now people are an interesting subject for me. I love them but new people…. I shrivel into a cocoon and want to hide from the world. It comes from a fear of judgement being afraid that myself is too much. Yet, there’s two things that’s slowly allowed me to start to eradicate this fear. Firstly, the people aren’t the people that we fear. Everyone I’ve met so far on this internship have been some of the most accepting, caring, and welcoming people. Everyone completely different but still helping each other. Also, with most of the interactions taking place online. I’ve been able to face my social fears from the comfort of my living room. As little as it might sound, being in a space that is familiar removes some of that facing the unknown which can be so daunting. I was talking to people in the space filled with memories with all the people I loved. In the place where the goofiest, real me wan usually on full display. Why should I let that change just because a camera is on? That made the biggest difference of all, because if people are being so kind and accepting of the real version of me, there was nothing to be afraid of.

Well, there’s one of the biggest obstacles taken care of but I know there’s more. I was scared that I might be too overwhelmed and that the work might feel like a tidal wave. It had happened before with university work at times and I didn’t want to push myself to hard. But the internship has taught me some valuable lessons on how to manage this stress. We use outlook calendar to view our meetings and see things clearly. I’ve figured not only having a routine but being able to see it visually and clearly helped immensely. It made me feel prepared and ready for the weeks. Moreover, I’ve been able to learn how to keep a work and life balance. Whereas at university I found it difficult to split my time between them. I now know when I need a break, what to do on said break, when I need to see some of my favourite humans and sometimes when I just need to be alone. It’s something that I wish I had known a long time ago, and it’s something I don’t think a lot of people think about.

I want this to be an encouragement, to everyone who worries their differences, or their fears will be obstacles. Even if they are, it won’t control your experience and there’s the possibility to accomplish things you’d never expect. Don’t let yourself be held back by anything, take control and remember that nothing defines you unless you allow it to.

By Amber Berry (Student Intern)

After 20 years, I am slowly starting to appreciate the importance of time. Sure, I am sometimes excellent at time management, but then I can be awful. For example, one day last week, I thought it would be a great idea to stay awake until 3:00 am and then be up, ready and prepared for 8:45 am. However, after that, it all went downhill.

Think about your past week. Did you wake up every morning prepared and fully awake? Don’t worry if you didn’t, but it highlights you might need to change your lifestyle. This Student Internship is a fantastic opportunity, but sometimes it can be overwhelming so let’s change our habits to be the best we can!

I am not sure if Headspace wants to give me a sponsorship deal because I am essentially promoting their app right now, but last week I found out that you can get Headspace for free if you have a student Spotify account. The app is a means of making your life better. For example, this week, I have used it every night, and I have even fallen asleep from some of the guided meditations.

Don’t worry, I know what you are thinking right now, I know some of you don’t really ‘vibe’ with meditations, but there is also calming music and other activities to look at if you are interested. Nevertheless, I am essentially trying to convey meditation is an excellent means for this internship. If we are fully alert and prepared for our early starts, it will significantly impact our contribution to this internship. In fact, I’d even argue that everyone around you will benefit from it.

What if you completed this every weekday? It would become a part of your daily life and would feel less like a daily chore. YOU NEED TO DO THIS!

OK, I will stop shouting now… I might just be getting a bit carried away. Another way to prepare for work is to make sure you update the Microsoft Teams calendar. On Monday, I scheduled everything I had to complete this week. I promise you it will improve your time-management skills, and it just makes others aware that you might be busy, so they don’t bother you. One thing I dislike is people bothering me when I am really, really, really busy (I turn into a mini Hulk). So, for me, this just massively helps my concentration throughout the day. It allows me to have structure, and sequentially, I perform more effectively.

At the end of the day, maybe ask yourself did you complete all your tasks? Did you feel calm? Did Reece’s advice work? If not, I guess my psychology degree was all for nothing… I am just joking. Just try your best, and you never know you may benefit from reading this blog.

By Reece Thomas (Student Intern)

Week 2

Monday

When I woke up on Monday morning, my first thought was, I start in my department today. At first, I was really nervous. I was so used to having forty other people with me, but this time it was different. Thankfully, we still had a big meeting with all of us first thing at 9am with the LTD team to ease us into the morning. After completing Phase 1, which was the induction and training week, Phase Two was going to be working in our allocated departments on a range of projects, whilst still gaining and enhancing our skills. Luckily, we aren’t fully leaving the LTD team yet as they are going to be giving us additional support and training over the next few weeks.

Next, we had a meeting with our new line manager and our key contact for the next eleven weeks, as I have been assigned to the Faculty of Education – My key contact is Sarah Wright. She assigned us our weekly tasks on Monday, including: reading lists, learning episodes and getting to grips with software’s such as Padlet, Adobe Spark and Google Sheets. I was really looking forward to learning about new software and gaining more experience working with a smaller cohort.

Tuesday

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday,  I had a great start to my Tuesday morning. As a team we had all met at 9am to discuss our plan for the day and to collaboratively work on an Adobe Spark poster, introducing us to the rest of the department. My part in this was making sure that the poster contained Alt Text so it was easily accessible. Learning how to make documents accessible is really important especially within a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). As part of my role within the internship, I will be able to assess and apply my knowledge of accessibility to Learning Modules so they are accessible for everyone.

Meeting everyday at nine with my team really is a great start to the day, it allows us to track our progress. The way to do this even more efficiently is that we decided to shift speaker every week, this allows us all to enhance our ability to lead a meeting. We also have someone designated as the minute taker, so if anyone is unsure on what to do next or wants to reflect on the meeting, they have a document containing all the information.

Tuesday was the day that we also met with the FoE social media team and discussed multiple ways to promote the faculty on social media. Using social media is really important for Educational settings as they can communicate and collaborate online with one another to create and celebrate opportunities. I found this super useful as I was able to transfer these ideas to another project some of the Student Interns are working on, which is to use Social Media to promote the work we are completing as well and to promote the Internship.

Wednesday

I think most people can agree that on a Wednesday, you either feel great because Friday is only two days away or you are left in a little bit of a hump, because Friday is still only two days away. I was super excited to hear Laura and Leah’s advice and feedback to collective ideas the Social Media Intern Team had come up with. However before I could get carried away with ideas, I had tasks to complete for my department. Wednesday’s task was to start on a learning episode. A learning episode is a structured way of learning, especially useful when it comes to teaching and learning online. A learning episode can contain different online tools to help students stay engaged with the content. An online tool that I used throughout the learning episode which I constructed were: Adobe Spark and Padlet. This task really helped me understand the amount of work and effort our lecturers put in to every session they deliver.

I was so excited by the time half one had rolled around, because not only could I get my hands on some more social media content, but I also decided to collaborate with two of my fellow Student Interns, Rachel and Simon on bringing you this blog every week. This was a big step for me because usually I like working alone, but one thing the internship has taught me already is that teamwork is efficient and really helpful especially when you have thirty-nine other people to help you out when you are a little stuck.

Thursday

By the time Thursday had come, I was already almost finished with the tasks that Sarah had set us. So, I decided to refresh my mind on all the training which had been provided for us by Laura, Leah and the rest of the LTD team. Luckily for us all of our meetings and training sessions are recorded. So, after I finished my tasks I refreshed my mind on Accessibility, how to use Panopto and how to make PDF’s accessible (which before this session was posing many questions for me).

This took me a couple of hours, but I still had a lot of my working day left. I jumped onto a meeting with the rest of my FoE team and asked where they needed help. After sorting out a few issues and finally being able to put a banner on Blackboard I was done. But it was not yet five o’clock…

I think one of the best things about this internship is that you do really learn on the job. Both Laura and Sarah had expressed the importance of enhancing and gaining skills. Therefore, for the last hour of my working day, I completed a few LinkedIn Learning courses surrounding topics such as how to lead a meeting and how to utilize my skills to their best abilities.

Friday

Finally it was Friday and the second week of my internship was almost over. After my daily meeting, the first thing I did was Admin. I made sure I had filled out my daily timetable. Once that was checked off, I moved onto my weekly reflection. As a student it is important to reflect on your work, this is echoed within the Internship. We are encouraged to write about what we have done, what we found hard and how we overcame those challenges. Within mine, I spoke of how at the start of this week I lacked experience working with spreadsheets, because they can be finicky. Yet, by the end of the week, I became more aware of how they worked and came to grips with it. I had also watched a few LinkedIn Learning courses to help with some tricky parts too.  

At the end of the day, I was looking forward to my next week working with my department and excited to work further with my team.

By Sharnie Bowen (Student Intern)