Month: August 2017

How to be Sensible about Science – End

Dear future intern,

This week was spent mostly finalising all of the work I did and archiving everything. I added subtitles to the videos that have been made. I exported them all for YouTube. I digitally organised and filed away all my work for future reference. I followed up my Ask for Evidence Campaign entries.

The highlight of the week for me, was a co-worker realising she has been pronouncing my name technically incorrectly throughout my internship and finding this unacceptable. This was during a sci-fi and fiction pub quiz we went to. We came third place! (they also went to a movie quiz but I couldn’t make that one, sad face) Next week, I will be attending a talk with them at the Science Museum. It will be a nice way to catch up.

I’ve learned a lot during my time here about what kind of career I want and how to work effectively. Since it’s a small organisation, it is run in a similar way to a team; so, I’ve been trying to figure out what makes a team thrive. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

  1. The immediate people around you. I’m the type of person that can plug their earphones in and work without any socialisation; but even to me it was obvious that the general atmosphere of the office is a prime motivator. I would say it is probably even more important than your role in the company.
  2. Getting things done. Duh. I used to procrastinate on action by trying to make a very neat plan and only following it through when I was feeling 100% in the mood in order to get the best result. Now as a general rule, I actually think having a working prototype is much more valuable. You can always iterate to improve on it. The Pareto Principle has never clicked into place in my head as well as it does now.
  3. Collaborating, but splitting responsibilities clearly.
  4. Last but not least, trusting your team. Give them freedom with their tasks, let them own it, let them fail, let them get creative and then be proud of the things they create. This perhaps applies more to management. What can I say, it worked on me so I assume it will work on other people.

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me out of all this, is that I enjoy working. I know it doesn’t sound serious, but I honestly thought I would hate a 9-5 job. It’s actually quite nice as long as you’re working on something challenging, and have room to explore new concepts.

Looking back, I can only wish the Charity Insights Scheme offered longer placements. I’ve met some great people and I haven’t dreaded a single day of work. This is all I can offer you to look forward to future intern.

Yours truly,

Koral

How to be Sensible about Science – Middle

Dear future intern,

If you are to take one advice from my entire series, make it this one. Have you ever been to barber? It doesn’t matter if you haven’t. I’m sure you’ve seen a boy in the past with a horrible new haircut and thought to yourself “How did he ever think that style was good idea?”. Well, I’ll tell you the answer; he didn’t. The thing about barbers is, if you don’t specifically tell them what you are expecting to get out of your visit, they will just give you the generic haircut they are familiar with. It’s not their fault, it’s the customer not communicating their expectations properly. It is the same when interning with a small company who doesn’t have a strict intern program. This is an advantage, you get to choose what you’d rather do! Go to them with a project and specific goals, if you want to make sure you get what you want out of it. People usually lazy out on the finding a project part of Charity Insights. They just go with a vague description of what kind of interning they will do. Don’t do this.

My second week started with me researching Maddox Prize candidates and writing up nomination profiles on them. Now, while nominees of this prize are very unusual people with interesting pasts, the work quickly got mundane. It didn’t fit my personality and it wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to do. I was more interested in learning than doing arbitrary research.

Thankfully, after a very short time of doing this, my main internship project kicked in! I got this internship with one goal in mind; learn how to use the Adobe Suite. Everything else on top of that was just extra. Looking back, I’ve learned a lot, the Adobe Suite was just a section of it; but I’m very happy about the fact that I’ve accomplished my main goal and have produced content I’m proud of in the process. Unfortunately, I can’t show you the content here because most of it hasn’t been published yet. Week 3 consisted mostly of me doing graphic design and video editing, showing my progress and alternative ideas then iterating and finalising. I doubt any of this interests you much, so that is all I will say on it. Also, I went on a picnic with my co-workers so that was nice.

I also got a reply from Turmeric+ about the claims they made in the advertisement below. For the record, they backed their words up fairly well so kudos to them. I have since made 2 more such entries for the Ask for Evidence Campaign about the Dangerous Dogs Act.

 

Yours truly,

Koral

How to be Sensible about Science – Beginning

Hello dear future intern,

A bit about me; my name is Koral, and I interned with Sense about Science in August 2017. I knew about this charity because I noticed every year one person from the Charity Insights Scheme chooses it. So, I assume every year after me, interns from Imperial will keep coming here. Therefore, I have chosen to write my blog in the format of a diary to you, dear future intern; though everyone else is welcome to read my adventures as well of course. I plan on writing 3 posts, all of them in retrospect. They will encapsulate the beginning, middle, and end periods of my internship.

Right, so first day of work. When coming into the office, the only people I knew were Chris and Ana, because I had interviewed them. They both had seemed very friendly. I had the kind of nervousness that betrays you by showing up at the last second. I got introduced to everyone by first name. I did not know anyone’s roles, and I still don’t. The office is a single room where everyone is open to communication, people tend to have things they’re currently working on more than roles. This has made me realise I’d actually quite like working for a small company. I like having a say in everything that is being done, as long as I have the competence and desire. Then I jumped into my first monday headlines meeting, where people go through the week’s work. Lots of acronyms got thrown around, my notes had lots of question marks next to them because I had no idea what was going on. Then I was given a little guidebook, a Gmail account, and access to their server. Hectic first day. Oh also, everyone has a favourite cup in the office. I personally recommend the plain ones! Next thing on the list was getting assigned a newspaper. The first half an hour every morning is spent by reading different newspapers, and then discussing anything that might be relevant to the charity. It’s quite a nice routine, I opted for waking up half an hour late in the mornings and reading it on my way. My assigned newspaper was the Metro, which I spent a shameful amount of time looking for in stores before I realised it was distributed for free at stations. They also took me out on welcome lunch and paid for everything, which was awfully nice of them.

Anyway, enough babbling on. Time to talk business. For the first week, I did some odd jobs here and there. A noteworthy part was preparing lots of folders and documents for the Maddox Prize. It certainly didn’t help that their number of nominations compared to last year had doubled to more than 100. Now, on the surface this was a classic case of grunt-work for an intern. However, I was ready to take initiative and blow my co-workers’ minds (slight exaggeration but let me have my dreams). I went to my old friend Google for advice on shortcuts. I quickly taught myself some VBA (turns out you can program in Excel, who knew!) and AutoHotKey (had to download software for this one). I also found a little .exe application called Text2Folders. These allowed me lightning speed, and I am fairly confident I made up for the time I spent researching and more. Now admittedly, this was a risky move from me. My attempts at making this work could have been for nothing, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing for the most part. What I loved though, is no one told me to stop wasting time on it. They just left everything to me. As a result, I got it done faster than expected, left them a little guide on how they can replicate the process in future years (you’re welcome future intern), made the work interesting, and gained skills from it. I think this is a good example of why you should get an intern. Worst case scenario, you do the work. Best case scenario, you provide a solution from a new perspective.

My other work included writing a Reddit post for their Plant Science Panel, and making my first contributions to their Ask for Evidence campaign! More on that later.

Until next time!

Yours truly,

Koral

Review of my great internship experience at S.A.S!

It’s the penultimate day here at surfers against sewage, and what a fun and engaging experience this has been.

Week 3 & 4:

  • During the last two weeks, I have been doing smaller tasks, such as typing up many of the plastic-free pledge names and emails into a spreadsheet (thankfully, a handful of volunteers took the main chunk out of this task!) I also made a comprehensive budget for 25 new Beach Clean boxes for schools around the country. To be more suitable for school pupils, certain items had to be altered from last year’s budget, such as 2x goggley eyes and 2x graptor, and a change from a regional reps hoodie to 4x school reps tee’s, in the hope that a small team of pupils will safeguard the box year upon year.
  • Created a spreadsheet of school contacts in all areas of UK (10x Primary, 10x Secondary schools in each), in order to later contact about possibility of becoming one of the 25 partner BCB schools.

 

3 things I was impressed with:

• The vast array of different tasks I was given meant I never once found myself bored and I always looked forward to the next day. Getting the chance to get creative for a couple of days was something that I don’t do too often, so it was refreshing and super fun!
• The links the company has with many big names in the environmental industry, such as Patagonia, was something I wasn’t previously aware of. I think it shows that the charity is heading in the right direction, and in combination of increased membership year-by-year, I believe it can, and is producing real change for our oceans.
• Last, but possibly the most important, the staff attitude and dynamic within the workplace so vibrant and positive. Everyone is focussed on their respective jobs but also everyone is friends, which is so important to achieve the campaign goals and create a fun place to work from.

Constructive criticism:
For the sake of the charity, (and whilst appreciating that it’s hard to foresee what will be popular/useful at events), I did produce some unnecessary work (Boardmasters maps & staff tally were not really used.) Although I had loads of fun making these, maybe next time ensure all prepared props are kept on top of during events, or otherwise not spend so much time on them in the first place. I feel like the time spent on those could have been spent on starting David’s mapping project, which unfortunately I wasn’t able to get my hands on to.

Overview:
Having been at the office for 4 weeks has wholeheartedly been a pleasure. Being a local avid surfer, SAS was a charity that I was aware of and engaged with for years. However, actually working intrinsically within the office has opened my eyes to how resourceful the work must be with a limited budget, and how mindful the staff attitude is. Each and every detail for all current campaigns is thought-out, ensuing that the campaigns are sustainable for the future. I truly have become friends with all the staff here and I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better internship!

 

 

The end?

Today was my last day with the Anthony Nolan Team. Honestly, I have no idea how come this month passed so quickly. Each week was slightly different as the team was changing and my tasks varied. In the last two weeks, I worked more independently. Mainly because most of the Register Development Team have been on annual leaves. As their email boxes were practically shut, many of them were directed to me, meaning I would start my day reading at least 20 emails. Not going to lie, it kind of made me feel important!

However, answering to emails wasn’t my only job. We were working on a huge change for the charity – from collecting saliva samples to swabs when recruiting new donors for the registers. I participated in meetings connected to that project and was helping the team with that transition. We had to make new information booklets, procedures, supplies order forms and trial events. They are hoping to launch it properly with the start of the new academic year. Fingers crossed!

Moreover, I was undertaking my independent research project, which involved analysing current recruitment strategies and finding new partnerships and ways to recruit more people, especially young males from ethnic minority groups. I think it was my most difficult task, but really interesting. I’ve learnt a lot about their work and strategic involvement with different organisations, groups and individuals. I have created a report that could help them in expanding the register and reaching the goal of recruiting 100 000 stem cells donors per year.

One of the best days I had in the office was the one spent in research labs! I’ve been given a tour around there, talked about the procedure of making the register, I’ve seen the way from saliva to the DNA sample and got a chance to ask all the questions I had. It was truly inspiring to see and discuss all the potential that stem cells have.

On the last day, I stayed 2,5h longer to finish everything. For the first time, I’ve seen a completely empty office! It really made me realise that it’s the end and I need to say bye. I finished the interactive map of managers that is now hanging on the wall in the office and left – proud and happy, but also a bit sad.

The team organised a lovely goodbye for me – they got me many freebies and took for an amazing lunch. And of course, as a part of ‘everyday cake policy’ in the office, there was a cake to celebrate my last day.

It was an amazing experience and I do believe that my story with Anthony Nolan has not really finished yet.

 

Seeing an empty office on my last day of work definitely made me reflect on the whole month.

 

Interactive map I’ve created. It shows Regional Register Development Managers and their areas. Names and cities can be removed as they were written with a chalkpan. This one, the map can be useful between different teams and can be updated in case of a change in the team.
That’s us (part of the RD team) on my last day- we had a swab trial event in the British Legion.

‘How do you ride a bike with no wheels?’ – My time at London Nightline

After a brief hiatus, I am back to complete the final half of my project at London Nightline! Right now, big changes are happening at Nightline as the charity moves from its long-term home at the University of London Union to a new location in Central London. In the meantime, I find myself at Nightline’s temporary office nestled in some KCL student halls. This means a new commute to South London and new challenges such as ‘How do you ride a bike with no wheels?’, which is how I’ve found it after a short stay in the new neighbourhood.

 

Transportation challenges aside my project is progressing well, with the trials & tribulations of organising volunteer interviews and collating feedback data all but complete I find myself freshly adept at conducting interviews and creating both spreadsheets and surveys. I now turn my focus to report writing where I have begun to identify key areas where Nightline is working effectively and others where there’s room for improvement as a service. My aim now is to convey this information concisely and effectively within my report and make sure the relevant people within the charity can put improvements into action.

 

My time at Nightline so far has given me some great experience of volunteer engagement and project organisation. I have been lucky to work with Grace, the very helpful and knowledgeable new coordinator of London Nightline who has been on hand to offer her advice and views about the important aspects of the project. Over the next couple of weeks, I look forward to bringing my report to fruition and then over the next year seeing how this the findings of this research can be used to improve the way we work as service.

Embrace the egg…my final weeks

My time at the RHN has sadly reached its end but I know this isn’t the end for my project.

During the 3rd week I spent my time putting together a presentation for primary schools where I had to channel my inner child. I found it quite difficult explaining such a serious disability in terms that children could understand while still making the presentations enjoyable. I found some resources online from charities that help explain neuro-disability to young children so that they can better understand the condition when it affects a loved one. To make the presentations interactive I came up with a few props and experiments including a ‘brain box’ that will be used to explain the touch sense to the children (as you can see I’m very proud of my box) and a jelly bean taste experiment to highlight the importance of the smell sense.

The last week was spent adding the finishing touches to my presentations and collating information on local primary and secondary schools that I am going to contact with regards to my project. Unfortunately schools have broken up for the summer so it’s been difficult to get in contact with them but I’ll keep trying and hopefully in September I’ll have more schools interested in my project.

My last day at the RHN was filled with cake and eggs (odd mix I know) and was one of my favourite days there. One of the major aims of my project is to raise awareness on how vulnerable our brains are to damage and how important it is to protect them. Logically, this ended up with us making a series of different ‘egg helmets’ out of polystyrene cups and dropping the eggs in the car park to show what a massive difference wearing a helmet can make (tragically only 3/7 of the eggs survived).

I think it’s fairly obvious which prototype survived.

Working with the people at the RHN and seeing the amazing difference they make to people’s lives was one of the best experiences I could’ve asked for, I’ve learnt so much about the brain and how much we take it for granted and I really hope my project will benefit the charity.

 

 

A report paints a thousand words

Last weeks Healthcare tech community roadshow had inundated the researchers with a plethora of fresh data to interpret and analyse. Luckily for me, this meant that I had been presented with the unique opportunity to see the process of report-writing first-hand and live; right at the start of the week. From this, I was able to decide on the format and parameters of my own report.

My suggestion to my friends at the refugee meeting place, for an in-house written monthly publication to be written by the team of regulars that I met with, had not fallen on deaf ears. Over the next several weeks, I hope to help them develop this from an idea to its fruition. Following my visit to the Victoria Hall meeting place, I headed to the office to find it unusually quiet.

Unfortunately, the in-house DJ, who constantly played through his collection of catchy 70’s pop music for everyone in the office, was on leave. After finishing up some coding (this is where you simplify interview transcriptions into easy-to-understand issue points), I asked a colleague if I could help her deliver sessions, on the locality plan, to some community groups. And then came the saddest moment of my 4 weeks, “I would have asked for your help Kishan, but you won’t be with us by then”. Until this point, I had been pretending that my precious Summer was never going to end.

With one hand stroking my beard and the other with a mug of coffee, I spent the rest of my week behind a laptop screen, typing up what I had found out an into a report. From this I learnt, always start writing long pieces of work as soon as possible. By doing so, one is being kind to their future selves.

Bolton is home to the most fulfilling student lunch offer – 2 for £1 Pasties. So technically, London has nothing on Bolton.

Image result for carrs pasties

I’ve always felt a strong connection to my hometown and so it’s been an absolute pleasure to see how supportive the community has been to the refugee and asylum seeker populations. Speaking to Bolton’s newest inhabitants has not only offered me a fresh perspective on life and also helped me to become bolder in striking up conversations with fellow Boltonians. Furthermore, this experience has advanced my understanding of the life course theory which will no doubt aid me in the future in medical practice. Additionally, it has reaffirmed and strengthened my desire to work around policy research and implementation.

My final week at Drop4Drop and Brighton

I’m genuinely sad to say that my 4 weeks at Drop4Drop has come to an end. It has been a great experience in a new city with a great team, partaking in interesting work.

In my final week at Drop4Drop I have been analysing and summarising project partnership proposals from other organisations to see the eligibility and suitability of Drop4Drop working with them in the aim of eliminating global thirst. This has also entailed me doing some outreach to other charities and organisations to see if they would be willing and able to work alongside Drop4Drop.

This week I also got the opportunity to look at geological reports from data that was collected on site by the geologists working the project in real time. This was a great insight into understanding professional geological fieldwork reports and picking out key information from them that can then be used in the decision making process back in the office. In this case it was determining the best filter design to be integrated into the projects based on the data about the water quality that I received.

From my Charity Insights Internship I have learned a lot about the processes involved in running a project from the initial identification of an area all the way through to finishing it, monitoring the infrastructure and implementing any maintenance work. This has been very insightful and I hope will prove valuable in my future career in water resources.

Knowing that the work that I have been doing will have an impact on the lives of people that live half way around the world that I may otherwise have never had an opportunity to help really adds an even greater sense of satisfaction to my last 4 weeks.

This internship also gave me my first insight into what life will be like working in an office giving me an idea of ‘office etiquette’. Thankfully the team at Drop4Drop made this very easy for me and made me feel extremely welcome and involved within the group. This has helped to prepare me for my life in the ‘real world’ as a graduate and makes me actually look forward to it.

Macmillan Weeks 3-5

Week 3 began with some proper work, looking into the needs of cancer patients in digital – exploring the different attitudes towards digital as well as the different ways patients use it. This, firstly, involved investigating a list of various health apps currently on the market and seeing how they worked, different features they had and in what ways they’ve hit the target market. Funnily enough, this involved actually having a play around on most of them so if I’m ever in need of health-restoration, I know exactly where to go!

With everyone at Macmillan being so friendly, people in other departments are kind enough to give you an induction into their area of work, answering any questions you may have. I leapt onto this opportunity and tried to explore various other departments such as social media, evidence engagement and video. It was fantastic to see how, for example, Facebook and Twitter are so carefully used from a company perspective, as well as how the research gathered by Macmillan is efficiently and accurately portrayed to the public. Most importantly for me though, I really enjoyed talking to the video team because of my aspiration to one day enter the world of documentaries – talking to them helped me understand the steps I might have to take to gain more experience in this industry.

We also had our first meeting for our intern fundraising event. It was pretty obvious after a few minutes that a pub quiz was the most popular option which made it quite easy to decide. With about 3/4 of the interns helping, it allowed us to fairly split up the work amongst us – with me being on questions! I met up with a Macmillan pub quiz master to teach me the ways of conducting a successful pub quiz and it seemed that it was much harder than originally thought! But thanks to him, we had the building blocks and key knowledge of how to host a great pub quiz so fingers cross…

The weekly meetings with my manager helped to keep me on track of what I was doing, ensuring I had enough work to do each week. Allowing me to sit in on various meetings and debriefs, I gained more of an understanding about our project which may eventually allow me to contribute to how Macmillan develop their digital presence in the future!

The end of week 5 has left me hitting the ground running, making it much easier to get on with work as I have a much deeper understanding of what’s going on now! I hope the second half of the internship well be even better!

PS I’ve got a great view of Imperial College’s Queen’s tower from where I’m sitting – spectacular.