Charity Insights

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

Read How to be Sensible about Science – End in full

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

Read How to be Sensible about Science – Middle in full

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

Read How to be Sensible about Science – Beginning in full