Visit to my old school

By Jaykishan Patel

The University of Sheffield offers its students various unique opportunities, including a chance to take up the role of an International Engineering Ambassador. This job allows ambassadors to go out and inspire A-level students to take up engineering in university. 

In January 2020, I was given a chance to return to my former school as an International Engineering Ambassador. Back when I was in school, I would shy away from such offers, this may have been due to a lack of confidence in my ability to deliver a presentation or a fear of being judged by peers. However, during the final years of high school, I started to regret all the opportunities I had missed, but joining university gave me a second chance. I realized that I was no longer threatened by the fear of being told I wasn’t good enough and the only way I could build my confidence was to take up any opportunity that came my way and learn from it, hence why I decided to go back to my school and deliver this presentation. 

Images taken during the presentation (left) and the Q&A session after (right).

Never had I given a presentation to a group this large, a room with around 40 people, but I thought of it as a good starting point. There was certainly some hesitation and nerves, especially on the day of the presentation. To get rid of this, I tried to prepare myself as best as I could, read through the points and know what I was going to say for each slide. The better prepared I was, the more confident I would be since I knew exactly what I had to say and didn’t have to think on the spot. However, things didn’t go as well as I imagined they would, and I am glad the pictures didn’t capture all the times I mispronounced words and repeated myself. Still I look back at it as a great learning opportunity and I now know what I need to better for the next time I’m in a similar situation.

I will always remember this experience fondly as it taught me a great deal and made me achieve something that I thought I would never see myself doing. Also, I will never

Christmas Break School Visit

Thursday, 23 March 2017

Written By Ioan Alexandru Herdea

Holidays are the time of the year when most students go back home. Some of them to spend time with their families or just to go back to meet up with old friends. What is guaranteed, is our aim to maximise our opportunities in those short time slots.

The last break in this academic year was at Christmas, some of us IEAs headed back home. As we love the University of Sheffield so much, it is inevitable that we want to tell others about our life here and about the Faculty of Engineering. I had already mentally prepared my talk about Sheffield in readiness to answer questions received from my family about my time here.

I hoped to share my experience about the first semester with students at my old high school and others schools if possible. I have to admit that I did not simply go straight into classes and start talking to the students! Before leaving Sheffield, members of the IEA organised a training session on carrying out presentations in schools. This excellent and informative session, was run by Marta Grzybek and Abhinav Kongari. Plus, I got a polo shirt with the UoS and the IEA Logo on it, which is amazing!!! Just imagine the feeling of walking among old high school mates and teachers with that emblazoned on your chest.

In preparation for my visit I created my own PowerPoint presentation. It was pretty straightforward and didn’t take long, as I only had about 45 minutes speaking time. My talk was not for promotional or marketing purposes but to inform students about my personal experiences, including what Sheffield is like as a city, student life, my course, being an IEA, the process of enrolment, and of course, talking about our much loved Diamond building.

Now…I think it is time to tell you about how the presentations actually went. Well, I was very surprised to find out that at least 30 students were interested in what I was going to talk about. This happened at each presentation and was carried out in three different places. I have to mention that, from my own point of view, opening yourself up in front of a such a large group of people may be a bit scary and you may be nervous. However, for me it was the complete opposite. The experience gave me so much confidence, to know that my words were so interesting to others. The fact that I was studying abroad at such a high ranking institution, the University of Sheffield, provoked a lot of interest. I began my presentation by going through slides with a lot of enthusiasm. As I had rehearsed what I was going to say, I was able to keep an eye on my audience and noticed that they were all avidly listening. When it came to the Q and A session, there were many raised hands. I was asked all types of questions from fees to how much I spend on parties!

Finally, I shall not forget about the last visit I made. The audience was made up of rugby players and as I am quite a slender person, and could be described as a ‘stick’, when I was surrounded by them, it reminded me of a Laurel and Hardy film, but the feeling was good. This is because I am also a professional player, I know that participating in team sports, helps to build a good character, so I was sure they would be quiet and they would pay attention.

Now that a few months have passed by, I realize what an amazing experience it was. I feel so proud to represent my University everywhere I go and I would strongly recommend everyone to do this. This experience can give you so much confidence and provide a lot of fulfilment during your academic years.

High School Visit – Summer 2015

Thursday, 8 October 2015

By Jannah Shaffie

Last summer, while spending my summer break in my home country Malaysia, I visited my previous high school, SMK Gunung Rapat. Whilst there, I got the chance to talk to the current students aged 15 years, about my university experience. My aim was to provide them with information about studying overseas, particularly Sheffield.  I also talked about the course I am currently studying. As they facing a big examination in a few months’ time, I thought it would be an excellent motivator for them.

There were few topics that I touched on during the talk, the first one being on Sheffield and The University of Sheffield. The difference between the UK and my home country was definitely something I wanted to share with them, i.e. the four seasons, the university facilities and the students’ union. The students also seemed very keen to know what it’s like to be a university student in the UK.  I included some pictures of extra-curricular activities I did in Sheffield. Amongst them, the sports I am involved in such as netball, also about the volunteering opportunities and the open days I had worked on. Apart from sharing university life, I also wanted to introduce them to some aspects of my course such as maths, electrics, anatomy, programming, medical physics and many more. I also showed them my course timetable and explained how university was different from high school life in some aspects (e.g.  class hours, class size) but similar in other ways.

On top of that, I talked about my placement experience at the hospital. I told them about the kind of job I did in the hospital and introduced them some of the machinery available there. All this was done in the hope that they would have a greater understanding of my course and my talk would motivate them to follow their dreams. The talk lasted for 1.5 hours, including a question and answer session, which involved many of the students. I then finished the talk with few tips on how to survive school and university. Hopefully, they found the talk beneficial and helpful for their future. As for me, I am so grateful that it went smoothly with the help of many parties which includes the school, the school counselors, the IEA team leader, Natalka, and the IEA scheme as a whole which helped guide me throughout the preparation of the talk.

Representing the Sheffield Engineering Community in India

Tuesday, 29 September 2015

Written by: Saylee

A large part of what IEA’s do is outreach; this summer I visited a school in Pune (India) to talk about the different Engineering degrees at the University of Sheffield and how I applied to Bioengineering. Due to the relatively low knowledge students had about the application process, I explained this further, explaining to them the importance of picking the right degree course suited to their aspirations.

 My talk included my experience so far as a Bioengineering student and about Sheffield in general (which included boasting about our new Diamond Building, of course!). Students were interested in the opportunities available to them after graduation so I gave them examples of recently graduated IEA’s and what they want to do next.

It was a really satisfying experience to answer the kind of questions I had before I applied to Sheffield and I feel the students enjoyed the information session as much as I did. Towards the end, I handed out our IEA postcards as a token of remembrance and this generated a lot of excitement! I also shared with the students our blog website if they wanted to follow our experiences further.