Amelia Miles, a Forensic Sciences student describes how being a Global Officer helped her to gain valuable employability skills, leading to a summer internship.
One thing I love about university is that you get to meet so many new and interesting people. Last summer I picked up a shift as a temporary worker for Kent Union Jobshop and met a girl who started telling me about being a global officer. She described all the ways it helped her land a prestigious work placement and boosted her employability skills. After our conversation that day, I was set on GOLD and partaking in it became my new mission for the next academic year. I was very quick to rope my friends into joining me as well haha! Though little did I know what I would actually be getting up to.
The first few workshops I attended for GOLD were so interactive and really helped me to open up my mind to think about other perspectives. I liked the fact that the second half of the workshops were dedicated to group work where we could discuss topics and ideas with the other global officers. We covered things like intercultural communication, sustainability and just generally being conscious, understanding and inclusive of different cultures. After getting us to start talking, we quickly realised that all of our backgrounds were so different so it was really insightful to hear what each of us had to say.
Not too long into the start of the programme, we began planning our first global hangout. I was really excited and got stuck right in. Since we were holding the event for international students, we decided to have Guy Fawkes Night as the theme so they could learn a little about British festivals.
It ended up turning out really well, especially for our first event together! Our hard work paid off and our vision was successfully carried out, with the decorations uplifting the space. It was so nice to see students actually engage with the arts and crafts we had prepared and see them get competitive for the quiz!
Now this is the part where I tell you that I am an aspiring digital marketer, and as someone who isn’t studying marketing at university, the GOLD programme came in clutch! I was so happy when there was a call out for help with the promotional side of our global hangout and I volunteered straight away. Constructing an email to be sent out to the mailing list, designing posters and social media posts, and creating promotional videos all helped me to independently strengthen my marketing skills, gain more experience and have an excuse to play around with Canva for the first time. There was also a blog writing workshop held which, of course, I attended. I really enjoyed going to this session as I got to learn from a professional, outside speaker and get some ‘training’ in a sense which I could apply to future projects! You can see some of my work for Instagram below:
By March, Worldfest had quickly rolled around (the university’s cultural celebration week). This was the second event I got involved with, and was by far the best one! In the initial event planning meetings there was talk for different hangouts, a fashion show, and then a cooking class was mentioned; as self- proclaimed foodies, my friend, Jasmine, and I were quick to make note of that one! The date for the cooking class arrived and we really enjoyed making and tasting the Katsu curry, with the guidance of the friendliest chef I’ve ever met. He even agreed to feature in my TikTok!
We also managed to get involved with helping to plan and diversify the menu with dishes from around the world for Rutherford dining hall during Worldfest. It was really interesting browsing all the food options, seeing what goes on behind the scenes and getting to chat with Geoff, the Food and Beverage Manager. He was so open and welcoming of our input and was kind enough to treat us to lunch and gift us Wok Bar vouchers!
On top of this, I also helped come up with the activities for the Worldfest global hangout, like guess the flag, match up the language and a chopsticks challenge where you had to try and pick up skittles! It was a lot harder than it looks – even my Mandarin teacher from China was struggling!
We also suggested some of our favourite Thai, Korean and Japanese movies for the international film screening.
Overall, the whole programme has been so enjoyable and I feel like I really got to make the most of the opportunity. At the start of the year I thought that this programme was exactly what I needed. I was searching for ways to become more confident and expand my skill set. Looking back now, that is exactly what it has done. I am so grateful for the opportunities GOLD has helped lead me to, including landing a summer internship at a marketing agency with all the employability points I earned through completing the programme! So for anyone considering doing GOLD, you should definitely go for it because you never know who you will meet, what impact you can have on each other and where it can lead you.
