\t\t\t\tHey there, my name is Alejandra and I\u2019m a Master\u2019s student from Colombia. As part of my course, MSc Nutrition and Behaviour, I had to undertake a work placement of 12 days. Although it sounds like a short time, I discovered that there is a lot to do and learn. This is the story of how I got the placement I wanted, what I learnt and how I overcame some obstacles.<\/p>\n
How I got a placement with SportBU<\/strong><\/p>\n After a few interviews in some NGOs I was feeling down because most of them couldn\u2019t receive me at the time. Coming from a different country, it is hard to know where and how to apply for jobs in the UK due to the cultural differences in the professional area. Nevertheless, I found out what other students had done in the past and remembered that one student had worked for SportBU, so I contacted them directly and prepared for my interview. Since they didn\u2019t really know what they wanted me to do, I designed a PowerPoint presentation full of project ideas I could do for them in just 12 days. This was an advantage because they weren\u2019t expecting me to be so proactive – they got excited and we even came up with more ideas together and planned my whole placement. What I learnt is that showing interest and effort are key characteristics when finding a placement.<\/p>\n What did I do?<\/strong><\/p>\n I accomplished quite a lot in just 12 days, from interacting with students, organising events and creating content that would be helpful for them. First, I wrote a couple of articles about nutrition and behaviour. The topics were diverse: from reading the traffic lights on food packaging, to calories, sugar cravings, sleep and how to create diet habits. I had fun writing them and I learnt a lot from reading and summarising information.<\/p>\n Drop-in session<\/strong><\/p>\n I also organised a drop-in session, where people would go in for 15 minutes and I would give them nutritional advice based on what they needed. At first, I was nervous because I wasn\u2019t an expert in the field. However, with the help of some teachers, I prepared an FAQ that included information about the most important topics surrounding nutrition. I also did a presentation and had some online resources at hand. The most important thing is to be prepared and have a positive attitude. Overall it went well – people liked it and so did I.<\/p>\n Nutrition workshop<\/strong><\/p>\n The last thing I did for SportBU was organise a nutrition workshop. This was the biggest challenge because it required me not only to prepare relevant material, but also to find a way to make it interactive and interesting. To achieve this, I created an online game and had a prize at the end to encourage people to pay attention and enjoy the session. We managed to go through all the topics in a fun way and I finished my placement with gratitude and lots of lessons learnt.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hey there, my name is Alejandra and I\u2019m a Master\u2019s student from Colombia. As part of my course, MSc Nutrition and Behaviour, I had to undertake a work placement of 12 days. Although it sounds like a short time, I discovered that there is a lot to do and learn. This is the story of… Read more » about Finding a placement and making the most of it<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3124,"featured_media":8154,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1644,828,1663,12,704],"tags":[1694,190,710,2103,337],"class_list":["post-8152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-employability","category-international-student-stories","category-postgraduate","category-student-blogs","category-student-life","tag-alejandra-toro","tag-colombia","tag-international-students","tag-msc-nutrition-and-behaviour","tag-placement"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15316,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8152\/revisions\/15316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}