Media and Communications student Iulia Serbinovici explains how the pandemic hasn’t stopped her from gaining some valuable work experience…
Like many other home and international students, I am keen be successful in everything I’m doing and want to maximise my student experience. I want to explore every opportunity that might help me to establish my career after graduation. Before the pandemic, and in order to get some valuable work experience, I had applied for a SPIN Internship, supported by Swansea Employability Academy.
The SPIN programme provides a series of short paid internships that connects students to employers. There is more about the programme here https://myuni.swansea.ac.uk/work-placements/
These placements give students a real insight into the day to day operations of a wide range of organisations. The opportunity I applied for was to work in Digital Marketing within the Media and Communication Department.
But no sooner had I completed the application, many of the University’s regular operations became understandably restricted due to Coronovirus. So many things changed, and I thought that the SPIN opportunity might have disappeared for good.
But miracles happen ! The University is gradually returning to normal, and a couple of weeks ago, I found out that I’d actually been successful in my application. My first task is to put together two interactive posters highlighting the employability activities of two COAH departments – Media and Communications and Classics, Ancient History and Egyptology. I quickly began working with my mentors Non Vaughan Williams and Mostyn Jones, who are able to advise and guide me in terms of poster content and design.
As part of my background research, and to understand how employability is prioritised and practised within these departments, I decided to talk to as many people as I could.
One of my first calls was to Rachel Evans, a member of the Industry Panel that regularly meets with staff within the Media department. Rachel explained how these discussions and exchanges between industry professionals and lecturers helped to prepare students for media jobs after they graduate by identifying which skills and competencies are important for employers.
Then I spoke to Dr Joanne Berry and Dr Stephen Harrison from Classics, to understand the range of help that’s offered to students alongside their studies.
Having done my background research, it’s time to get creative and produce the posters. Watch this space !
