Sijuade Yusuf is doing a 30-week placement at Hengistbury Head. Here’s a Q&A on her experience.

1. Three words to describe your placement search: Full-on-research, devotion and doggedness
2. What did you find the most helpful in your placement search?: Career Hub is indeed a great resource. All the help that is needed can be gotten on the career hub microsite from CV writing to mock interviews to job vacancies. It is a tool I believe every student should harness.
3. Three words to describe your placement: Educative, informative and eye-opening.
4. Most interesting part of your placement: With the number of events and activities involved, every day comes with its peculiar task which makes every bit interesting. I particularly enjoyed coming back to BU for a Global Talent Event to give a presentation on how everyone can adopt social media for the platform and voice it provides to promote and enrich our natural world. It felt like I was giving back to the university and helping the students on a topic that is arguably the most controversial globally.
5. Hardest aspect of your placement Oh, I thought the long distance I sometimes had to walk to the Hengistbury Head Local Nature Reserve was a bit time consuming until I changed my outlook and began to see it as increased opportunities for my daily exercises.
6. Most enjoyable aspect of your placement: The chance to write official communique for an organization as big as the Bournemouth Borough Council has been profoundly enjoyable. This does not only play on my psyche but also presents an enormous opportunity to flesh out my C.V. in a way that reflects an extensive communication role for a community and people-focused organisation.
7. What have you learned that you never thought you would have this year?: My increasing technical and design skills are something that I didn’t necessarily envisage would be where they are now. I never thought I would spend so much time measuring the length of letters and identifying what word would fit on a line in graphic designing without spilling over! Paying attention to detail and innovation are increasing skills that I continue to harness on my placement year.
8. What gave you the most satisfaction during placement year?: Unrestrained opportunity for every placement student at Hengistbury Head to take ownership of every assigned role whilst judiciously applying classroom knowledge. From my residual classroom knowledge, I have been able to come up with interesting ideas which my colleagues and I have been able to put to test.
9. Two tips for future placement students: Placement students should approach finding the right placement with a positive attitude – believing that there’s something out there for everyone. Secondly, when a position is secured, placement students should remain confident in their abilities. It is important to want to learn and explore new things, it is more important to be reminded of the objectives behind taking up placement positions.
10. One example of how BU supported you during your placement: My Placement Development Advisor, Vianna Renaud has been exceptionally supportive, guiding and following up here and there and generally making sure I am at ease every step of the way. In her first visit to me at Hengistbury, our conversation presented to me a picture of someone genuinely interested in my progress with the substantial number of referrals she made along my career path.
11. One example of how your course prepared you for the placement: Being able to apply communication theories and communicating ideas using new technology/modern communication channels in a lot of my deliverables has been beautiful. The Leave Only Footprints project which I work on is a new initiative by the government to maintain Bournemouth and Poole’s open spaces. As such, publicity, audience engagement etc were things that our lean team of three started from scratch affording me to take the lead in my area of strength.
12. How have you changed both personally and professionally?: I am definitely paying more attention to details and taking my research skill a lot further.
13. How has your placement helped focus your future plans?: On this journey to actualising my personal goals, which interestingly ties in nicely with my career goals, I am grateful for the canvas this placement year has provided; to scribble, make mistakes, erase those mistakes and try again.
14. Any other comments: I work and share an office space with Brian Heppenstall, the 2018 BU Alumni of the year. How cool is that?

Sijuade Yusuf, MA Media and Comunication