WELCOME TO CARDIFF SIXTH FORM COLLEGE

Careers Day 

By Amber Summerhayes

On Thursday 7th June, the students of Cardiff Sixth Form College were lucky enough to be visited by a number of speakers who gave presentations on a variety of different professions. Throughout the day, we not only gained a valuable insight into many interesting careers, such as medicine, accounting and investment banking, but also received a large amount of advice and endless tips on the university application process including personal statements and interviews.

Holly Powell, an accountant at Deloitte, kick started the day with a fun and interesting talk about her day to day job and how she came to be in the profession. The talk was very interesting for the budding economists, as well as those interested in other courses as Holly kindly shared details of her gap year and stories of university life in general.  This was followed by a presentation about healthcare professions, in particular medicine from John Alcoladowhere we not only received valuable information on applying to medical school, but  also learned about the seemingly unlimited number of specialties from which we as future doctors are able to choose! After this, Dr Nick Craddock gave a talk on his particular branch of medicine, Psychiatry, and his research into bipolar disorder.  This stirred up much interest amongst those interested in healthcare courses, and particularly with myself as I wish to specialise in psychiatry!  Though I think many of the students were interested to hear that Dr Craddock has met a number of famous people through his research (including Stephen Fry!) and were left in awe as he reeled off his list of impressive qualifications! The next talk was very different from the previous one, and was in fact focused on investment banking.  We were extremely grateful to Mr Wong, who actually delivered his presentation via Skype ... all the way from Singapore! This talk led to much excitement, especially from the economists among us, and led to a lengthy and extremely enthusiastic question and answer session!

After a short break, the healthcare students returned for a presentation from Dr Alan Ngwho once again gave us a step by step as well as extremely detailed account of the application process, though in particular he focused on the method of scoring used in interviews, which was new information to us all!

Finally, to end the day we were visited by 3 third year medical students from Cardiff University, who along with giving us advice and insight into a medical students busy schedule, also brought with them a number of teaching aids which allowed us to have a go at some clinical skills, including testing each other’s blood pressure!  This was a wonderful end to the day which was received with much enthusiasm from the future medics!

Overall, the day was insightful as well as inspiring, and confirmed if not enhanced our desires to study our chosen courses.  The careers day not only gave us further incentives to study these courses, but also provided us with valuable hints and tips on how to get accepted onto them at university!  Everything about the day was extremely helpful, and I cannot thank the staff of CSFC enough for organising the event, along with the presenters for delivering the talks!