The Future Is Bright!
Monday 1st June 2015
I’ve been a STEM ambassador for less than 4 months now and have got a few STEM events under my belt now… I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect from it all. I’d never worked with youngsters before (I’m sounding old already) – would I be interesting? Would I inspire them? Would I end up turning them away from a career in science and engineering?! All these things went through my head before my first STEM activities and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t at least a little nervous!
Thankfully, all of my fears have been thrown right out of the window after my first few STEM activities and I’ve enjoyed every minute of what I’ve done, from competition judging, to careers fairs and to generally just talking to kids about my job and the kind of work that I do. One of my personal highlights so far has been taking part in a “what’s my line” activity where I was able to bring in a number of props from my work and get the kids to guess what I did for a living. There were a lot of very interesting answers given… and a lot of questions that had me stumped from time to time! I think it just goes to show that there are definitely bright futures ahead for young people who wish to follow a path towards a career in STEM environments.
As a civil engineer, I wanted to tell the school kids about my job and try and get them interested in engineering like I had been at an early age. Already I see that inspiring children to become invested in STEM subjects is massively important, and is a must if we are to address the UK’s STEM skills shortage (The Engineer, 2012).
Having only recently graduated from university, I’m looking to go back into academia at some point and help future generations of scientists and engineers… maybe this is just the first step??
Here’s hoping 🙂
