Scholarship Residential

Exams are over and the sun has shown its face, and so English summertime has well and truly begun, which for me means it’s time to crack on with my Undergraduate Reserach & Leadership Scholarship. One of the most enjoyable times of the year for us scholars is our annual training residential which this year took place again at Weetwood Hall.

After an early start and greeting a bunch of familiar faces, we sat down for presentations from the scholarship teams, then a very enlightening presentation workshop run by the university’s Staff & Departmental Development Unit. After this I, and all other second/third year scholars, had to present an overview of our research projects so far to the group. Having completely misread the email abou these presentations, I hadn’t had time to pull together an accompanying PowerPoint, however I think I managed to pull it off – I like to think that the group were laughing with me rather than at me!

After this we all split up, checked in to our lovely hotel rooms, and reconveined in fancy formal dress for our evening dinner. The complimentary wine began flowing, we enjoyed an amazing presentation by Dan Crow (who has worked at Google and Apple amongst others!) and a lovely meal, before hitting the bar for a bit more socialising before bed.

The next day we were up bright and early for “Wake Up, Shake Up”, which, as cheesy as it may sound, was loads of fun! It consisted of a series of five teambuilding/communication activities, such as building towers, travelling on planks and firing rockets! However, we soon had to wrap up and head in for some more workshops, including a research poster workshop in which I divulged a few nuggets of design knowledge (which naturally included a rant on Comic Sans…)

All too soon though we had finished all the workshops and networking and were asked to group up and make 1 minute videos to describe our experience both at the weekend and as scholars and ambassadors of the university in general. Damian has taken these to work some post-production magic, and was also snapping photos of us throughout the two days, so I shall be posting a link to all this media once it’s been posted…

Overall it was a very enjoyable weekend – so much so that I completely forgot to actually take any photos! So I do apologise for the rather text-heavy post, but it was too much fun not to write a little about. I shall be back soon with more updates, including stories upon my return from the upcoming scholarship outward bound trip, and some details on what my reserach so far has been like… Stay tuned!