This blogpost assessment has pushed me to go to provided seminars and out of curriculum seminars, some of which I would not have particularly chosen previously or thought about attending before.
Creation of the page: I am both for and against this blog assessment. The pro would be for content creators, such as the people who use YouTube and twitch for a source of income, to have a section of the internet where you will always be registered to, is a great idea for their career. As those sites or platforms would possibly be sort lived. This would also be applicable to those people wanting to pursue a business career with a website and product seller. However, for the students that want to pursue science as a career, I feel that this skill is not necessary to talk about “one’s self” or other work to a wider audience that may not have an interest in the area that they describe on the internet in an informal fashion.
Snakes in wales: As this was my first seminar I wished to write up on, I wanted to write about one of my interests, covering reptile populations and conservation management. This talk was given at herp soc, as the school unfortunately had minimal reptile seminars with in university hours. I hoped this would create a positive response with a routine of writing these blog posts. The data collected was concise and if I were to stay in education, I would have liked to explore this problem of populations of escalapion snakes being established with in north wales and not being native to the UK. Being an interest of mine it was easy to take time out of the day to produce a blog post for this seminar.
Lizards in palm oil forests: this was also an interesting talk, again provided by herp soc (a society aimed at reptile enthusiasts both having an interest in keeping reptiles and wanting to have knowledge on reptiles around the globe). This was demonstrating the effects of human influences with our need to change the environment to suit us; with no regards towards the animals that originate there. The key notes from this study is that the herps, living in the developing Malaysian landscape, are reaching their thermal limits with no places of refuge to cool off, therefore becoming exhausted and essentially overheating within the habitat.
The other seminars where also interesting and consisting Haematology, stem cell transplants, the evolution and biogeographic influence on the radiation of red colobus, hunting in monkeys: human and primate behaviour in remote locations and masturbation phylogeny from a function in primates. These all interested me as they were all field work studies collected around the world, and most of them influenced by humans which is what science should be striving toward, informing the general populous on what effects we are having on the planet and what we can do to minimise these effects.
CV writing assessment centre – I feel that this was an informative set of lectures that only provided resources to go to, if you had questions, instead of providing help from within the school, which could have been compressed in to one lecture rather than three lectures, no detriment to Clare Brass.
Assessment centre: I feel that it was nothing but a farce; the egg experiment was another approach to a first-year exercise where we had to get to know each other, and not relevant to the CV, job open day or an actual job simulation. The experience I have had applying for jobs, being minimal at most I know, but the approach of three people to interview one candidate Is dated, as most interviews are staged over the phone or are video calls and have multiple online assessments, which was not stated in the assessment day and was limited with in the PowerPoints.
Dragons Den Workshop: I feel that this was not necessary for Biology students or for School of Science scholars. The project was primarily business related, which had a failed attempt to implement biology in to the session. Therefore, this was more of a forced timetabled slot where I saw this section on the open day to” show off student ideas”. Consequently, I thought this was a free idea stealing programs, for new products to be created with all the proceeds going to the school. With the attention only focused on “Bangor students” as a whole with no actual acknowledgment towards the brains or the specific people behind the creation of the idea. Only self-admiration with no actual input or legwork being carried out by the university.
In conclusion, I feel that this assessment was both, a waste of time and a drawn-out affair, which half of the students in the year did not start till after Christmas. Then complained (late in my opinion) when the deadline for handing this in, was on the same day as the dissertation deadline. Another idea could have been that more thought should have been given to different target audiences, rather than as a whole school. The process started lingering since September. A short and concise assessment would have been better as third year is stressful enough with ongoing work and dissertation, rather than this assessment. I enjoyed the seminars that where displayed out of house as they were targeted to the interest of the few, which I realise could not have been set out by the university, but I am glad that these out of hours seminars where counted toward this assessment because of the lack of in hours seminars that didn’t interested me.
However throughout it all, I have enjoyed the lectures I attended which, if I were to stay in education, I would prefer to either go in to the field of herpetology as I would like to have studied either snakes in Wales or the effects that humans are having, changing the environment where reptiles or amphibians live. Failing this, I wouldn’t mind going in to the field work side of science, aiding in research on primatology or herpetology. As I am not planning to go into academia, either going into pet shop management or reptile management is another keen interest to me, which was one of the seminars I attended but I didn’t add to the blog.
Alex Kenney - Eportfolio 