Nuffield Research Placement 2016-past participants

1. Would you recommend it?
Hell yes.

2. How long was your placement?
4 weeks

3. What time did you start in the day and what time did you finish?
Officially we had to work 9-5, or 10-6. I normally came in 9:30-5. But another nuffield student in the same department was often late, sometimes getting in at about 11 and leaving at 4/5.
They were pretty chill where I went.

4. Is it worth it?
Very much so. I loved being in the lab environment and I have a greater interest in research as a result. I learnt about science I had never come across before and did very interesting practicals (conveniently most of them are in the A2 syllabus)

5. Hows the post research things coming along, the report, presentation preparations? (if there are any?)
The report had to be finished in September, mine was a bit late but I still managed to get a Gold CREST award. It was long though (mine was 20 pages). Then we had to make a poster for a celebration event, most of us did it in the Oct half term, it was easy to make since we had already done the report. Some people applied for the National Science and Engineering Competition, but I wasn't aware of the deadline and missed it! I'm going to do a presentation to my sixth form about it, which should be fun.

What A-levels are you doing now?
What do you hope to study at university?

Woah that sounds amazing and well done on your crest award I really hope i get a place.
Im studying Biology, Chemistry and Maths and as for university I'm not too sure, hopefully the research placement will help if i get accepted

1. Would you recommend it?
This depends on what you would do if you weren't going to do Nuffield. I spend my summer holidays indoors, because i'm in a town with very few attractions. I figured 4 weeks of using my brain is better than 6 weeks of staring at my computer screen wondering what life has to offer.

I would recommend it.

2. How long was your placement?
My placement was 4 weeks, which was really nice, I felt a sense of purpose for the 4 weeks.

3. What time did you start in the day and what time did you finish?
I started at around about 9-10am and finished 15:50. They wanted me to start late because I had to travel 3/4 across Essex on the train to get to my placement. I started 1 hour earlier than the other people doing the placement because of my extra distance, and I finished about 40 mins before them, because of awkward train times *it was either 40 mins early, or 1 hour late*.


4. Is it worth it?
Big question here, there's a lot to go over.

I would recommend it. *in case you don't want details*

I learned a lot, I made friends, I was USEFUL!
*Not putting myself down here, it is just to apply yourself to a situation, rather than stare at a screen for 6 weeks*

5. Hows the post research things coming along, the report, presentation preparations? (if there are any?)

So you have to do a report on what you did... I hate reports/coursework. I'm very good at them, but rambling about one thing just annoys me. Writing the report was a challenge, but now, mine is hanging on my wall like a trophy and I feel proud every time I look at it.

So you can choose to do a presentation (speech) or a poster.

PRESENTATION:
You make a PowerPoint which covers your 4 weeks of research in 5 minutes, and you talk about it. At my celebration/ceremony event there were 8 speakers *including me*, I was the second speaker, and in front of a crowd of about 160 people *I did the math...*.

Backing up a bit, I chose the speech because I did BTEC Drama and got a Distinction*, so I'm not to talk in front of an audience, and I know the techniques to a good speech. *Cover this later*
If you do a speech, read my techniques. There were 8 speakers, the other 7 were boring, and they all admitted that, I had everyone laughing, while understanding what I was doing.

POSTER:
Does this need explaining?
Squeeze your report onto an A3 piece of paper, you are then expected to stand in front of it for an hour and talk to people about it. *pretty much it*

Speech Techniques:
Now *sadly* I'm not Johnny Depp, but I'm pretty good...

HOOK:
This is the most important part.
You need a really philosophical way of presenting your problem/solution.
In my case, I started with "How would you like to be a God? Not like the common representation of God... A God of something specific, like a Greek God, I'm sorry this is all I have to offer, but how would you like to be the God of small robot?"
See right there, supply and demand, everyone wants to be a God, and the supply is small robots and stuff...

Who, What, When, Where, Why:
I hope that's all of the W thingys... but yeah... do a slide with not all, but you know, 2 of them at least...

Specific Ambiguity:
Woah, big words!
What I mean by this, Is know what you're going to say, get some key words on your PowerPoint that will allow remind you of what's next to talk about; but don't write out your entire speech, because the moment you forget one word, you lose the rest of your speech and end up awkwardly blushing in front of 160 people. *This happened to two of the speakers*

Make It Simple:
C'mon, in the title bruh...
Remember, you spent 4 WEEKS 9-5ish working on this project, what you know is exponentially higher than anyone else in the room, do not go into details.
I figured, there's a lot of *smart* students, yeah, but most have 2 parents, and my mum failed most of her GCSE's, so you really have to dumb it down for the audience, not because their idiots, but because your a master and they're all scrubs.

Link With Life:
Again remembering that the general audience is adults who don't really care what you're doing...
Make it easy for them to understand, I was working on a robot that I could control via Bluetooth, pfft, what's a robot? Bluetooth? nah. I mentioned those two, but then pulled the audience in with *It's like a wireless Hetty the Hoover*, after that relation, every gets the jist of what you're talking about.

Show your thoughts:
So in my PowerPoint I had a part with a list of my objectives, and as they came up I described how I completed them. Got to my last objective which was way out of my reach and said "Yeah..., ummmnn nwell urgh, that didn't work out too well" I was trying to be brutally honest with them, I pressed the next button, and the objective popped up all in red and bold with a line through it... this wasn't intented to be funny, but the crowed just went in on it laughing, *serious tone* "That wasn't supposed to be funny guys..." The laughter escalated, im just thinking *wtf? I missed my own joke wut?*

Levels:
Not sure how this works for most people, but im 6'4" and the mic was in a desk, so my very first move, was casual walk up to the desk, then do a squat *all in my fresh suit as well* just so that I could reach the mic to speak clearly.
What I'm trying to say is, don't be afraid of the stage you have, make use of it, what I did there had everyone laughing before I even opened my mouth.

I understand I've said a lot, I'm also half asleep so take what you will, I hope I helped in some way, if you want to see my powerpoint or whatever, I got it saved still, just let me know.