BEHIND THE SCENES OF OXFORD APPRENTICESHIPS: OUR INTERNSHIP
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Miranda
I’m a second-year English Undergraduate at Hertford College, and was also recently elected President of the Oxford Students’ Disability Community (OSDC), the University’s Student Union’s disabled students campaign.
I was surprised by how journalistic the internship has been: interviewing the apprentices and the academic has felt a lot like working for a newspaper, but more relaxed. It’s been quite fun, and everyone has been very friendly. It’s definitely made me interested in Higher Education communications and communications in general, and I’d be happy to do more in it, maybe finding a job which combines it with my interest in disability activism.
Ania
I'm a Master's student, doing General Linguistics and Comparative Philology at Worcester College.
I really enjoyed meeting the Oxford Apprenticeships Office and Oxford’s Media Relations staff, as well as academic scholars and Apprentices we interviewed. Conducting interviews and the insight into the University from a slightly different point of view were truly interesting. The very write-up was also a lot of fun. I think journalism and communications in a Higher Education context may be a path for me in the future. What I find particularly fascinating about it is bridging the world of academia with the outside world. Popularising academic work is what I deeply care about.
I really enjoyed meeting the Oxford Apprenticeships Office and Oxford’s Media Relations staff, as well as academic scholars and Apprentices we interviewed. Conducting interviews and the insight into the University from a slightly different point of view were truly interesting. The very write-up was also a lot of fun. I think journalism and communications in a Higher Education context may be a path for me in the future. What I find particularly fascinating about it is bridging the world of academia with the outside world. Popularising academic work is what I deeply care about.
I found the micro-internship very enjoyable. It was great to see the work the Apprenticeship Office does and to meet and interview some apprentices. It was also really interesting to meet people from different departments and to gain an insight into what they do in their jobs. All of this allowed me to see how dynamic a job in university administration can be, a sector that I am definitely interested in working in in the future.
In the middle of March 2017, Oxford Apprenticeships opened up their offices (and their canteen) to three students from the University. Based at the University Administration and Services (UAS) building in Wellington Square, over three days we interviewed apprentices all over Oxford, received talks from other departments in the building about what they do and how the staff got into their jobs, and also had a chance to interview an academic for the Oxford Arts Blog, working with Oxford’s Media Relations Manager, Matt Pickles.
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| Us with some apprentices we'd just interviewed. Left to right: Harry, Ania, Katie, Miranda, Aston and Alex. |
On the first day, we came in at 9.30am and were introduced
to things by Anna Malkin and Clive Shepherd, the Apprenticeships Manager. They were both very friendly
and gave us a tour of the place after explaining what they do and what they’d
like us to do. We were then sent out to interview our first apprentices before
coming back for lunch. We had some time after that to turn our interviews into
a neat, written format and think about social media before some of the News and
Information Team, Matt and Stuart, came to talk to us. They
explained what they do for the University and their background as journalists. Matt
also told us a little more about his plans for us to interview academics. We
then had more time to continue writing up our interviews, then headed home at
about 5pm.
The next day we went straight to the Engineering Workshop at the Southwell Building at 10am to interview two apprentice technicians
and an apprentice receptionist. When we arrived back at UAS, we again had some
time to start writing things up before Silvia Verdolini came to talk to us
about Public Engagement with Research (PER), discussing the work she was doing
in promoting academic research to the public and her background in astronomy
and astrophysics. We then went to lunch, and spent the afternoon writing things
up and thinking about how we wanted to put what we had done on the
Apprenticeships blog, website and social media accounts. That afternoon we also
received emails from Matt with briefings for our interviews with academics the
next day.
On the final day of our internship we went to these
interviews, chatting to academics about a project they’re working on or
something that has been reported in the news, then came back for lunch and
again had time to write up. Near the end of the day we were invited along to a
communications talk with Oxford Innovation, and then we spent a little more
time uploading our interviews to the Apprenticeships blog while Anna chatted to
us about our plans for the future.
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