High School Visit - Summer 2015

By Jannah Shaffie

Last summer, while spending my summer break in my home country Malaysia, I visited my previous high school, SMK Gunung Rapat. Whilst there, I got the chance to talk to the current students aged 15 years, about my university experience. My aim was to provide them with information about studying overseas, particularly Sheffield.  I also talked about the course I am currently studying. As they facing a big examination in a few months’ time, I thought it would be an excellent motivator for them.

          There were few topics that I touched on during the talk, the first one being on Sheffield and The University of Sheffield. The difference between the UK and my home country was definitely something I wanted to share with them, i.e. the four seasons, the university facilities and the students’ union. The students also seemed very keen to know what it’s like to be a university student in the UK.  I included some pictures of extra-curricular activities I did in Sheffield. Amongst them, the sports I am involved in such as netball, also about the volunteering opportunities and the open days I had worked on. Apart from sharing university life, I also wanted to introduce them to some aspects of my course such as maths, electrics, anatomy, programming, medical physics and many more. I also showed them my course timetable and explained how university was different from high school life in some aspects (e.g.  class hours, class size) but similar in other ways.

On top of that, I talked about my placement experience at the hospital. I told them about the kind of job I did in the hospital and introduced them some of the machinery available there. All this was done in the hope that they would have a greater understanding of my course and my talk would motivate them to follow their dreams. The talk lasted for 1.5 hours, including a question and answer session, which involved many of the students. I then finished the talk with few tips on how to survive school and university. Hopefully, they found the talk beneficial and helpful for their future. As for me, I am so grateful that it went smoothly with the help of many parties which includes the school, the school counselors, the IEA team leader, Natalka, and the IEA scheme as a whole which helped guide me throughout the preparation of the talk.