I'm in my second year at Reading University studying Environmental and Countryside Management- nothing's changed there- apart from the workload which seems to have increased a bit, especially since Christmas. Still enjoying it though and the content has all been thoroughly interesting and relevant. I've had coursework hand-ins throughout the year, more frequently in the last few weeks. I have my end of year exams pretty much straight after the Easter break in May, then by the start of June I'm done for the year. I'm living in a house just off campus this year with 4 other people, which has been very different to the experience of living in halls of residence in my first year, but fun nonetheless.
Not sure if I've ever mentioned it on here but I also still volunteer for the local wildlife trust (Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust), helping out on their website. I do stuff like upload events onto their site, edit and publish blog posts on the site that people send in (mostly other volunteers and staff). I also help monitor their site statistics using Google Analytics, and do any other small website tasks that need doing. I used to travel to Oxford to BBOWT's HQ one day a week to do this work, but since my timetable changed after Christmas, I have no one day which is completely free, so I've been working from home since then. I suspect I won't be able to continue with this for too much longer due to the increasing workload from uni, and the important exams I have just around the corner.
Its this voluntary job which helped me get a paid job with BBOWT working in a cafe at a place called the Nature Discovery Centre, just outside Reading in Thatcham, which I started in early December. I only found out about the job because an email was sent round the staff and volunteers email addresses stating that there was a vacancy which needed filling quite urgently. I work there on Sundays, although due to a couple of people leaving in the last month or so, I've been working Saturdays, and occasional weekdays too; this week I'm working Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Nature Discovery Centre consists of a network of lakes attracting a decent diversity of birds, plus a visitor/education centre with a little cafe, which is where I work.
The voluntary job has also helped me secure a 12 month paid industrial placement at Kew Gardens next year as part of my degree. The placement year slots in between the second and third years of my course, starting in August 2014 and finishing in August 2015. I had an interview there in December (coincidentally it was also my first placement interview), and a day or two later they got back to me to let me know I got the job. Obviously I was thrilled to hear this news, and the prospect of working for such a well known organisation is very exciting. Specifically, I'll be working in the "Tropical American Plants Team", helping to develop an identification database (called the "Neotropikey Database") for Latin american plants which experts in the local regions increasingly use. You can find the database here. I'll be working with IT specialists and taxonomists to help deliver tasks and also provide a feedback system for users of the database to help understand where improvements can be made. I still don't know everything that the job will involve, but I should get more of an idea on this the closer I am to starting.
This job means that next year I'll be living in London somewhere with other placement students who are working in different departments. I'm excited by the prospect of living in London for a year, but also dreading the cost of living which will inevitably be huge. Exploring the green spaces of London will also be interesting, and hopefully some of the blog content over the next year or so will involve some of the wildlife I see there.
So why is any of this relevant to this blog? Well at the minute, my schedule is pretty complicated, and hopefully the context I've just run through should help explain things better. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm currently on my Easter break from uni, which runs up until the 27th April. I'm still working two or three days a week at the cafe over the Easter break, but its much easier to get there from the student house in Reading than it is from my home back in High Wycombe, Bucks. So on the days I'm working at the cafe, I'm staying at the house in Reading. The days I'm not working, I go back home to Bucks. So basically, my time is currently being split confusingly between two houses. This means the kind of content I post on this blog over the next few weeks will depend on where I'm located. As I write this post, I'm sat in my room in the student house in Reading, as I've got work on Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week. I should be heading back home on Sunday evening after work.
So in terms of nest box updates, I don't think I'll be able to post anything until Monday morning. I do have Dropbox set up as the destination folder for videos to be recorded in though, as I did last year. This means that any of the family back home can record videos on my old laptop, and they'll be sent to my Dropbox account and automatically downloaded to the Dropbox folder on my current laptop which I have with me here in Reading; I'll see what I can do.
I'm going to stop going on about my life now because its getting boring just writing about it. Just wanted to explain a couple of the factors (along with lack of commitment), which have meant that posts on here have been few and far between over the last few months. I'll leave you with a couple of shots I took in the garden yesterday. Need some ID help on the purple flowers- the name is in my head somewhere but I can't remember. I think we planted them, so they haven't seeded themselves there.
Sorry for the dull reading today, hopefully I'll be back to more interesting topics over the next few days. Will probably struggle to post this weekend because of work but I'll see what I can do.
Ah, I almost forgot... Over the past couple of days I've been adding a few posts to the blog archive, to try and fill in the gaps from last year. I've had pictures lying around from holidays and field trips that I just never got round to sifting through until now. Below are the links to the posts that I've been adding:
- Skomer Island (part of a field course to the South Pembrokeshire coast in my first year of uni)- June 25th 2013
- Norfolk Summer Holiday 2013- 20th August 2013
- Lincolnshire at New Year- 6th January 2014
Thanks for reading.
1 comment:
Hi Laura,
Thanks! I can't wait to start...
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