Episode Three - Emerging Opportunities

Welcome to the Road to Lancaster Podcast. This is Episode Three: Emerging Opportunities.

I often ask myself, why do people want to study a master’s degree? Most of us would say:

• We want to improve our chances of getting a good job, which will translate into a better income and a more stable life in the future.
• We want to develop new skills, which will translate into a sense of accomplishment for being a more capable individual and that will allow us to take advantage of emerging opportunities.
• Of course, we want to meet new people, make new friends, colleagues, new relationships, which is also called “networking.”
• We want to create new memories, new experiences, get to know new places, and this will bring some diversity, and variety, and just so many different flavours to our lives.”

So, in this third episode I will share with you the ways in which Lancaster University is helping me to become a more capable individual for my professional future. And I want to start by describing you some of the resources available here.

So, you know, Lancaster University has a very popular Careers and Employability portal, which is designed to help students achieve their professional goals.

In my case, the very first time that I saw these resources was even before the first week of classes. I remember that I was still in Mexico, before my flight to the UK, and I was already interacting online with a site called: “My future with a Politics, Philosophy, and Religion Degree.”

I took a few tests so that I could identify and reflect upon my strengths and my personality traits. I actually searched for some jobs and I was able to match some of the best options, or the best vacancies, with me and my goals. There were some activities that made me reflect upon whether or not a PhD would be the right decision for me after the master's degree. And there is just a prolific catalogue of similar activities that you could take as well.

And I am not kidding - this portal is very, very popular amongst students. In fact, one of my friends is now applying to her PhD in New Zealand after having met regularly with an advisor who helped her review her resume. They engaged in various conversations about her concerns and her goals, and he provided her with some suggestions and potential alternatives, and so on.

And I also have another who used the same portal to apply for some internships in a few of Non-Profit Organisations and he has already been interviewed by two of them. And actually, if he does get indeed accepted, he will be starting to work right away at the end of the master's, in London.

And in my case, I think that the portal is very easy to navigate. You are not going to lose tons of time in endless scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling, because the website seems to be designed so that it is easy to navigate and find what you’re looking for.

And I believe that the university has already some kind of agreements or relationships with some institutions, some corporations, or some organisations so that there is always new information coming up. You know, new events, new vacancies, new opportunities. And we, as students, have access to a lot of them and I think it's great!

So, in short, my first point here is: resources. Efficient, well organised, and accessible resources have been available for me as a student here.

But my second point is related to skills and there are also plenty of opportunities here to develop your skills.

For example, I enrolled in many workshops and courses that were directly related to my professional career, such as SPSS for statistical analyses or Qualtrics for designing surveys. And learning how to use properly these platforms for answering your questions or your concerns. And also Python for the social sciences. And there’s many courses and workshops and certificates even that you can take here as a student.

But not everything has to be necessarily related to your career, and so I also enrolled in some courses or workshops that I wanted to take for fun. And so, for example, I took a one-day workshop about Adobe Rush for video editing and I am now taking a journaling techniques workshop so that I am able to improve my writing techniques.

Nonetheless, beyond skills and beyond resources, I believe that one of the advantages of Lancaster University is its community. And by that, I mean the support and the kind of encouragement that I have received from my professors, from my lecturers, from my colleagues and friends, and for now, I can give you three examples:

Example number one is: last term, one of my professors would constantly send us links with opportunities for funding if you wanted to apply for a PhD. Links to conferences and events, and other activities with other universities beyond or outside Lancaster University. He was very approachable as an academic, so you could always ask him to engage in a conversation online, or to go to his office hours, or even beyond that.

And in my case, he always gave me feedback; he always gave me insights and advice that felt very supportive of what I wanted to do. So, once you come here as a student, you realise that many of the professors here are well positioned and well aware of the academic networks. And so, it was very nice to see that some of my professors had actually been physically to my university back home in Mexico. Some of them spoke Spanish.

And actually, last week they sent me an email calling for papers and advertising a presentation of academic papers. And I will be sending the essay, the final essay, that I wrote for one of my courses (modules) last term. You know? It’s very exciting because if everything goes well I will be presenting my paper, the essay I wrote for one of my modules, in another university in June this year.

Example number two is that academics here are really concerned and aware of your professional goals. And so, before sending the title of my research proposal, I was looking for a potential supervisor, someone who would be interested in my dissertation topic, and I remember that they would ask me: “What do you want to do with your dissertation after you finish your master's?” Which means that they were already trying to measure how good of a supervisor they could be based also on my professional goals. On what I wanted to do afterwards. How much advice they could give me for that reason, beyond, you know, being my supervisor during the dissertation to guide me through the process of writing it.

And finally, my third example is social events. There have been a good amount of social events in which I engaged with other students. And you can realise that that community of people who are passionate about your subject are also, they are also a source of emerging opportunities.

Actually, I am very excited because there is a friend I have who invited me to a conference with Steven Pinker, who’s one of the most widely known and recognised scholars in what I am studying right now.

But also, there is a friend I met two weeks ago, who just started his own organisation. And his organisation is based on agapic love, which is “unconditional love,” and the aim of his organisation is to promote activities, volunteering and events to show unconditional love to the community, locally, here in Lancaster.

And so, for example, they have a project now going on to help organisations that work with homeless. And so, he invited me to be a supporter or a member of the organisation and I have been engaging already with them and you never know what other opportunities can come from people that you meet as students.

So, if you would allow me to start concluding this podcast: I would say that in a world in which emerging opportunities come and go so fast and in a world where there is always growing competition, so that we need to reinvent ourselves, to become more capable, to develop new skills, and so on – I think there is no better way of doing that than in an environment in which you have efficient resources, well organized, accessible; that give you access to variety of courses and workshops to develop your skills; but also, and perhaps more importantly, a place where you can have this community of people who actively support you.

So I think that in relation to emerging opportunities, Lancaster University gave me already tools, people, momentum, the good feelings and the right kind of soil that one needs to seed, plant, grow, and harvest these opportunities that have crossed my path this year.

Because I do feel like a more capable individual already. I feel like I have better habits of reading and writing. I feel more confident and knowledgeable about the academic world. And I know that I can reach out to people, whether it is professors or students, to ask questions or support for what I want to do.

So there you go, if you decide to come this way, to take The Road to Lancaster, I am sure you’ll find on the way advisors who will help you strengthen your CV, gain confidence, reflect upon your choices, and alternatives. And I am sure you’ll take courses and workshops and engage in activities to strengthen your skills and develop new ones. And, finally, I am sure that here you will find plenty of opportunities for the ever-emerging future.

So, before I go, let me just say thank you for listening to The Road to Lancaster podcast. I hope that my experiences will help you make the right decision for yourself. And once you decide, I hope you enjoy the journey too. Bye-bye!

This is my original work as a Digital Content Ambassador for Lancaster University. This is a paid role, however any opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of Lancaster University.