February 26, 2023
Why is it important to gain academic experiences?
My dear readers,
A big part of my learning from childhood till this date has been active. Whether it is doing experiments in the lab or interviewing someone during middle school for a history project, I have always needed to actively participate and engage in my learning, it has been an educational requirement wherever I have studied. Now that I am at university reflecting upon this, I have come to the realisation that knowledge is important, but becomes a powerful weapon when combined with experience. So as university students, here are some thoughts I have about why experience is important during your studies.
For example, we can discuss lab experience as I study biomedicine and do a lot of experimental work in my laboratories. The experiments that we do in my programme here really facilitates my understanding because I can apply the theoretical concepts in a real-life situation and accordingly, analyse the results. Sometimes the results go exactly as the theory would state but other times, they can be quite different. Those situations can be challenging for me but ended up motivating me to think critically to find a reason as to why the outcome was so.
Experience is so important in any aspect of life. You want to become better at a sport – you need game/match experience. Similarly, to enjoy and truly understand all the content you are learning in your programmes, you need to gain some live experience. Now, I hope you’re thinking what I am…..INTERNSHIP!
An internship can be paid or unpaid, but regardless it gives you something that is worth a lifetime – EXPERIENCE. This is important because it allows you to work in the field that you are interested in, hands on. You get to visualise your future in a way, through a short period of time and can realise if you like it or if you need to find something else to do. I strongly recommend, when and if you have summer/winter holidays, to dedicate sometime to working or doing an internship wherever you like. It could be at a marketing firm, or a bank, or a laboratory. The university environment is very helpful when it comes to these opportunities as you can email a professor and ask about summer opportunities. I know it is very hard and may seem daunting but for whatever work you want to do in the future, or even if you want to keep studying, an internship can bring you closer to your path of success by giving you live experience you crave for in the field that you want to work with. A simple way to start is to go to the research page at LiU and look at professors and researchers that work in your area of interest. You can email them, read about the papers they have published or even contact a bigger organisation, if they are a part of one.
There are many benefits of doing an internship. It looks good on your resume for work or educational applications. It also improves your communication, team building and problem solving skills. You can also socialise and make new friends in the process. If you get paid, that is a bonus as well. I know sometimes we don’t want to work without getting paid, but trust me, the experience you gain is a long term investment into your bright futures ahead. So go ahead, email your teachers, get in contact with professors that come and give you lectures and let’s grab some valuable EXPERIENCE!
Till next time,
Shiv <3
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