A year as an intern

What is it like being an intern at the University of Bedfordshire for a year? You get to travel to Mauritius! How many interns can say that?

It has been an amazingly packed and enlightening year for me. I have learned a lot, got to meet great colleagues that I learned from and shared fun moments with.

I will walk you through my journey.

For The first 3 months, I was settling down, gaining access to finance tools, online platforms and knowing where everything is located. Did you know that the MARC team has promotional material dating back to 2003-2005? I sure did enjoy watching those it was like travelling back in time.

I have mainly worked in 3 main areas Policy, Events and Communications. Along that I have been a team leader for a Go Global trip an initiative at the university whereby our students get to travel to our university partner countries such as China, Mauritius, India and Dubai to prepare them for a global world and to enhance their employability. 

I have been involved in the preparation ofthe Annual Staff Conference that has great speakers and professional development for staff. In addition, I mapped out our operational goals to the strategic goals of the university, among a couple of other things.

I will dive deeper into my 3 main areas of work.

Policy is a collection of actions/initiatives that contribute to a goal often long-term with most efficient use of resources. In other words Policy is strategy! In the policy area I assisted with calls for evidence by the government to inform governmental policy, background research on opportunities/challenges and conducted surveys and focus groups.

Events side of things is assisting in the whole process of the event from planning to setting up, running of the event and post evaluation of the event. I enjoy events work, I get to meet new people and get to know what they do when hosting university events.  Events that I have been part of are our Beds Talks series an excellent and informative series of events showcasing and sharing our university research to the community, Vice Chancellor Public Policy Lecture series that discuss current and hot policy matters followed with questions from the audience and of course our Staff Summer and Christmas parties.

As for Communications, I help out with design work, updating website, creating the news week, helping with digital signage, managing the noticeboard inbox, and helping out with staff surveys. I enjoy Communication work it allows us to showcase and communicate the amazing work that colleagues at the University of Bedfordshire do. Projects I have been involved with in this role were Beds Stars awards and the staff benefit page update.

So that’s what it’s like to be an intern for a year at the University of Bedfordshire, a wonderful opportunity that I am grateful I got the chance to have.

Onwards and upwards!