Tea & Coffee? Biscuit? What about a career?

Hey Internet!

So here is the second in the series of blogs tackling the part of the module designed to target our future career project, the first being on the assessment centre!

This instalment is about an event that was set up for us called the Careers Café. Now some of you might be wondering what exactly that is, I know I did. I imagined some kind of careers fair with loads of people trying to push jobs at me with tea coffee and biscuits at the side. There was tea coffee and biscuits at the side, but I was wrong about the first part!

In fact it was a session with a panel of Bangor graduates who then shared their experience in finding a career. This Panel included:-

• Dr Ross Piper – Who studied Zoology at Bangor before doing is doctorate at Leeds, he now has several books and is a well-known BBC TV presenter.
• Cherry Shacklady – Zookeeper, then mum, then mature student and now head of Biology at a local school.
• Nia Jones – Marine awareness officer as the wildlife trust
• Naomi Willis- Health officer and scientist at welsh water
• Imogen German- Now a teaching assistant within Biological sciences but after graduating she travelled working voluntarily for several schemes involved related to Biological science.

Each person then explained how they have come to where they are in their career paths now! This was different and varied for the entire panel , but the key underlying theme was that they always took opportunities whether offered to them or if they created them themselves.

This meant that for some of them their routes where very…non-direct… but even if that was the case all the steps they took where linked and important and gave them experience and skills which could be transferred into their next opportunity.

I did find this café very helpful, not only because it told me that there really is in fact life after Uni , but mainly because all these people where following a career in a science they enjoyed!  As I said earlier this did mean taking some very non direct routes but they ALWAYS took the opportunities presented to them.

Thanks for reading and until next time, all the best!

D.