I started my placement in the EDI team in September 2021 as part of a placement year between stage 2 and 3 of my Psychology BSc degree. Since starting my role as FMS EDI Intern, I have undertaken various roles and in the process gained a lot of confidence. I have ran the EDI Twitter account, helped organise events and ‘My Journey’ talks, written reports, analysed data, and created promotional materials for the Equality Project.

My colleagues have been extremely supportive and helped me feel confident working alone on my own tasks and guiding my own internship, but also working as part of a team in the Equality Project. During my time working on the project I volunteered in workstream 1 (qualitative analysis), workstream 3 (taught programmes), and workstream 5 (PGR and ECR). In both workstream 1 and 3 I helped create and disseminate surveys to students and staff and helped create a report of the findings from the workstream 3 survey. Having to present and analyse data on my own as part of a wider team helped me organise my time better and trust my own instincts when it came to figuring out how to approach tasks. I now feel a lot more prepared for my final year and analysing data for my dissertation once I return to studying. I know that the skills I have gained working within the FMS EDI Team will be able to be applied in the rest of my academic career and also in future employment.

In March 2022 I also attended the Advance HE conference in Manchester with Louise Wright, Damian Parry, and Cristina Newell to present a workshop on the Equality Project and show other institutions how they may be able to do something similar. The conference was extremely eye opening to see all the great work that institutions around the country had been doing in a similar team/role to myself. It was also very rewarding to see the work we had put so much time and effort into over the prior months on the Equality Project be met with such a great response from attendees at the session and conference!

I was also nominated for the placement student of the year award by my supervisor Louise, this was an extremely rewarding nomination as it solidified that I had fulfilled my role within my placement well. However, I couldn’t have done any of it without the help of Louise Wright, Damian Parry, Amy Reeve, and the wider EDI and Equality Project team, who have all guided me throughout my internship and supported me with whatever tasks I took on, so thank you!!