Month: July 2014

The last week approaches..

Week 3 went the quickest of them all. Having got into the swing of office life I felt more confident still.

The challenge for this week was to take the detailed cross referencing tables I had made last week and try to form a more digestable verision as a resource! The audience would be the Clinical Commisioning Groups who could use this resource as a business case study to get the projects implemented in their local area. Once I have a temporary version the document can be sent to a publisher to be produced as a proper brochure (exciting!).

However, this task was easier said than done.

The end of the beginning

4th week – Last week! – Evaluation week

 

21/07/2014 – Monday

  • Volunteer interview.
  • Processing and response to new volunteer applications
  • Excel database update of all the volunteers.
  • Review and evaluation of the festival – what went well and worked/not so good/things to improve in future festivals.
  • Most importantly after 3 full weeks here – I had a meeting with the project manager Rachel about the structure of the project – drawing up a diagram of all the roles needed to be filled – what they each involve and how they link. Vital for the organisation to be sustainable for the future.

Second week with CWT

The start of my second week with Cornwall Wildlife Trust and I picked straight up from where I had left the project on Friday afternoon, following the first consultation with a renewable installation consultant. The consultation raised questions from both sides and I began to find the answers to the consultant’s and relay them to him. I got access to recent electricity and fuel invoices for the various buildings at the reserve, where I am based. With the recent invoices I began to log and manipulate the energy data to provide information requested by the consultant, and to try and determine the thermal energy demands of the site; attempting to identify what portion of electrical demand was used for space heating.

Week one draws to a close

My first week at St. Anne’s is (prematurely, for this week anyway!) over, and already I feel like I’ve learnt a huge amount.

Arriving at the breakfast club on Tuesday morning, in all honesty I was terrified. I was convinced no one would want to be screened for cognitive impairment while they were having their breakfast! But as soon as I arrived the staff made me feel very welcome, and went out of their way to make sure I felt comfortable. It was important to ensure that the service users felt at ease with me, so for a while I just helped out serving tea and toast, chatting to the people who came in.

Rethought Mental Illness

I can hardly believe that today is my second last day. On one hand, the last four weeks have flown by incredibly fast, and on the other hand, it feels like I’ve always worked here.

This last week has certainly been eventful! My survey (which was originally meant to go online last Thursday, then Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) is now being promoted through Facebook and Twitter! As you can see, it was being pushed to the next day a number of times – that is because Rethink tries to limit its activity on social media, especially Facebook, so that each individual post gets enough attention.

Week 3 – Derbyshire Wildlife Trust

Last week was another amazing week full of fantastic experiences. I’m struggling to believe my placement is almost over. Been so busy over the past week getting involved in many different activities, as I mentioned in my last post on Saturday the 19th I went to a small mammal trapping event which was a lot of fun, we basically used traps in order to get statistical values for the numbers of small mammals in an area of woodland. It was a great experience.

Later on in the week, I worked with a few more school groups, running various activities which I now feel confident leading.

Infrastructure and I: Part One – Getting Acquainted

Emerging from the underground and into the buzz of people that is Victoria station at 9 am, I did not know what to expect from the day. Spotting a familiar looking piece of scaffolding, I let out a sigh of relief – at least I was walking in the right direction. Indeed, it was the same construction site I had been circling around for ages a few months earlier when making my way to the office of Green Alliance for my interview. Finding that white door tucked next to a screaming red cafe proved to be a much simpler task the second time around, and I was happy to tick the box found in many first day guides: arrive 15 minutes early.

Week 2: Setting up a local (offline) server and getting to grips with web programming

My second week started off by investigating the same Formhub instance set-up on a virtual Linux machine using Oracle’s VirtualBox. The reason for this is to enable the uploading off the surveys to the Linux server without the use of internet i.e. by means of a Local Area Network.  This proved to be more difficult then the previous week’s case of setting it up using Amazon’s AWS services since it needs more tweaking and it is a newer method which still needs some debugging. Having said that I am getting quite close to completing the set-up except for occasional connectivity issues and disappointingly low speeds for a LAN based system.

Week 1 at the PHG Foundation; a science and health policy think-tank

On a hot British summer day, my first week at the PHG Foundation draws to a close, and I have many first impressions to share. The PHG Foundation is a Cambridge-based science and health policy think-tank, with the mission to bridge the gap between science and its practical implementation in society. My internship started with introductions to all the members of the team, and immediately I was made to feel very welcome in the friendly office atmosphere. From day-one, my expectations were confirmed, in that there is a lot to learn from the dynamic, multi-disciplinary team, which includes experts from the fields of genomics, medicine, epidemiology, public health, law and economics.

Day one at St. Anne’s Community Services

Week One

My project

Since it’s my first blog post I’ll just give a brief overview of my internship project. Over the next four-six weeks I’ll be working with St. Anne’s, a charity based in Leeds that provides a range of services to vulnerable groups in society, from the homeless to people with learning disabilities. My project involves working with St. Anne’s to screen groups of people for cognitive impairment, linked to ARBD – Alcohol Related Brain Damage.

ARBD is an umbrella term for various symptoms associated with physical damage to the brain, caused by both the toxic effects of alcohol and vitamin deficiencies that accompany its long-term use.