After some brief research it was apparent that being a lawyer meant you had to study all the different sections of law before you could choose just one. I started to get more and more distant from the career as my research went on and was eventually stuck on what I wanted to do.
Then I found STEM. STEM was introduced to me by my science teacher who initially introduced it as a new thing that would benefit us greatly, then came the ‘equality issue’, after being introduced to STEM she showed me the differences and statistics that evidently showed that there was a large gap between the pay in women and men.
This was completely unexpected to me and no one had ever told me that all the hard work I had put into my education would be undermined because of my gender. Then I started to look at ‘Women in STEM’ which was a movement that mainly focused on getting more women involved in jobs involving STEM.
From that I have been giving up my time to help the girls in my school who are younger than me realize that there is so much more things we can achieve using: science, technology, engineering and math. I then began to expand outside of school when we went to the ‘National History Museum’ in London where we attended a radio broadcast for ‘BBC World Service’ based on the science behind genetic engineering. This is where I took the opportunity to ask the scientists Kathy Niakan, Madeleine Van-Oppen and Gebesa Ejeta how they could inspire young girls to explore the opportunities in STEM. My school then began to have more assemblies on STEM and then one day Katya came in and did a presentation, so when I was left without a work experience place my school gave her a call and she was happy to have me.
My first day in the office was nerve wrecking because I had no idea what to expect or what I was going to do in full detail. One of the first things I done was attend a meeting. This meeting really opened my eyes to a professional work environment.
I can say for a fact it wasn’t what I imagined, one of the first things that shocked me was the friendly and warm environment that the meeting took place in which really took away a lot of my worries about the first day. The other aspect that surprised me was the discussion of women in the workplace which made me feel more involved in the meeting because of my work in STEM.
The meeting overall including the internal discussion introduced me to a whole different platform of not only vocabulary but also a lot of acronyms (which are used a lot). By the end of my first day I had learnt a lot about the company from its production of digital workspaces to its several platforms in Spain.
On the second day I was working with Iain Stuart (QA Analyst) who was working with me from Spain, Iain explained to me how they had to test every individual part of the page and he described it as ‘building a house’ and each section was like a brick. He then showed me some examples of what he had to do and gave me an opportunity to have a go at doing some myself. The experience of doing something like that was really fascinating as it showed the different areas of technology it explored from coding to design and how there was a process behind every inch of the page from the color to the logo in the corner.
So far, the experience has been enjoyable and has given me some clarity as to the type of environment I would like to work in when I start working as well as what kind of career I want to go into. It has also altered my opinion on work involving technology because it was one of the aspects of STEM which is not one of my strong points but it showed that there are so many different options available in technology and not just coding.
My experience has also showed me that this would be the type of job I would consider in the future because of the different experiences it gives you such as meeting new people as well as travelling for meetings or even working from home. There is also a various selection of jobs within the company which could accommodate anyone’s interest so it has a very broad variety of choices.
