Bio
Details: 20, from London, UK
Course: MEng Aeronautical Engineering with a Year in Industry
Job: Student Ambassador
Volunteering: Vice Wellbeing Officer for AeroSoc
Tags: Home, UG, FoE, Aero
Motivations and Frustrations
Motivations
Amara was born and raised in South-East London and comes from a Sierra Leone family so English is her second language. She is the first in her immediate family to attend university although she has many cousins from her extended family that have been to university. She is motivated by good grades and has recently discovered she enjoys the leadership elements of being a student committee member. Now she is in her third year her primary motivation is securing a Year in Industry placement, while maintaining her high grades. She is motivated to find a year in an engineering related field that will help her to decide what she would like to pursue as a career.
Frustrations
Finding a placement is proving challenging as she did not realise that she would have to find the placement herself. This meant that she missed the window for the bigger companies as they tend to recruit as early as September. She has found a lot of support for creating CVs and making applications but is finding its stressful because some of her colleagues have already secured their placements. She is also having to deal with rejection for the first time along with a lack of feedback from companies as to why she didn’t get shortlisted. The process of applying jobs takes a lot of time meaning she has less free time and study time. She also finds it frustration that many jobs advertisements are quite vague about what exactly she will be doing.
Year in Industry
Amara is in her third year and need to plan for her year in Industry. She has started quite late because her expectations of the programme and the amount of support available didn't ally align. You can find out how she managed this, and what she ended up doing on her work experience profile.