Friday 17 June 2016

A guest post from our work experience student Joanna

Hello, my name is Joanna Hewson. I recently spent 2 weeks at ScHARR on my year 10 work experience, working 5 days with RDS (Research Design Service) in the innovation centre and the other 5 days with IR (Information Resources) in Regent Court. Over the course of the two weeks, I have gained so many new skills and have got a real insight into working life.

In RDS, I learned about how the NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) can help with public involvement and funding in people’s research and found out about what it is like to do different jobs in the Research Design Service, such as what it is like to work in DTS (Design, Trials and Statistics) and what the CTRU (Clinical Trials Research Unit) do. Also, I helped set up for an event and afterwards, collated the information into a spreadsheet. I also produced a spreadsheet, table and list of organised dates for the Volidays scheme. This was interesting and I feel I benefitted from it through learning about jobs that I wouldn’t have known existed without this placement.

In IR, I found out about what different jobs they do as well, such as working on ScHARRHUD (http://www.scharrhud.org/) or doing infographics in the library. I also learned about e-learning and created some work sheets for online students. As well as this, I found out about the libraries on the campus and got a tour of a few. Also, I searched different databases to collect information on a topic for research – I feel this is where I learned a new skill in being able to use databases such as MEDLINE and Web of Science. I’ve really enjoyed the fact that people have given me work to do that may be new and sometimes challenging for me and not just small, easy jobs.


I’ve had a really great time on this placement and everyone I have met or spoke to has been kind, welcoming, helpful and patient with me if I didn’t understand something. It has been an excellently valuable experience and has given me an idea as to what I may do when I leave school.


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