Suited and booted, the entirety of our Y12 students travelled to Farlintgon School on Friday to attend a conference focused on career advice, University choices, and internships opportunities.
The Bellevue group once again organised an informative and insightful event aimed at giving guidance to students on the verge of shaping their future careers.
We interviewed Hasan, one of our Y12 students who joined the conference, to learn more about the event itself, as well as what the students have taken home from it.
Hasan, would you mind giving us an overlook on the whole event and its structure?
Sure. It was a very well structured event. After our arrival, we had a refreshment session, then two morning workshops separated by a break, then lunch, then two afternoon workshops also separated by a break. The speakers came from different companies and Institutions, such as “The Life Skill Company”, “Unilever Plc”, and the University of Winchester.
What was your favourite part of the day, and which workshop taught you the most?
I definitely enjoyed the session about the University Admissions Process and found it the most useful. Specifically, I found the presentation about how to write a personal statement the most useful, as I learnt quite a few tips I will definitely follow in the future. For example, they talked about what are the most popular sentences that people use to open up their statements, and before attending the workshop, I thought of using one of them myself.
Typically people start with “Since I was in Primary School”, or “When I was younger”. Now I know that I should try to start in a more unique way.
Did you have a chance to interact with students from the other Colleges, and in what way was this beneficial to you?
Yes, especially at lunch time and during breaks, we had some time to meet the students from the other Colleges and compare what their plans are, and especially what they are putting in place to achieve their goals. For example, some students said they considered hiring a career advisor.
I personally think that is a step too far, but by any means they should go ahead with it if they believe it’s useful. I am just happy with the ways I am preparing for my University applications: I am simply focusing on my studies and starting to think about how I can produce a strong statement for next year.
It sounds great. We are sure you are on the right path.
How do you feel about having the opportunity you were given to join a conference of this kind?
It’s definitely advantageous that we are given the possibility to be guided and think about our future in a way that we probably wouldn’t have considered by ourselves.
As I mentioned, I definitely have had some very useful tips that I will follow whilst writing my personal statement next year. Probably someone else found other workshops interesting in other ways.
I hope I will be able to join similar conferences in the future as well.
Is there anything that you would like to see or do specifically next time? Take it as a recommendation that you could give Bellevue.
I would say that the afternoon workshops were mainly focused on IT and engineering skills, which is a field that is not exactly the one I would like to continue my studies in. I would like to follow the Medicine path, thus maybe next time it would be great to attend something more relevant to my field.
Great. Hopefully your message will be passed on. Thank you for sharing your experience Hasan. It’s been a pleasure to get to know what opportunities sixth formers are given by Bellevue!