At Loughborough, there are many opportunities to gain experience in the real world, and apply what we have learnt in lectures. I completed a two-month summer internship back home in Dubai after my first year at McDermott, a highly reputable oil and gas company. It was my first real experience working in industry and I was in the Construction Support Engineering Department, where my role ranged from compiling databases on the various structures provided by the company, to preparing reports and stress calculations on these structures to judge their performance.
I also had the opportunity to undertake a year in industry after my second year. Securing a placement at Hawk-Eye Innovations was probably my greatest achievement of my time at University.
As a Systems Operator in the cricket department, I travelled globally to countries such as the West Indies, India and Sri Lanka, where the games were being played, operating technology during games to assist umpires with decision-making. The technology we used was incredibly advanced and having grown up watching cricket and now getting the chance to work behind the scenes like this and understand everything that goes on there was the greatest experience of my life, and was a fantastic year for me personally and professionally.
I also had a short three-month stint at eduMates, a start-up company founded by a couple of my friends at University. The company provides a platform for prospective University students to speak to current students at universities across the UK to get a better idea of what to expect at their universities. I worked as part of the Business Development team where we aimed to recruit current students to be student representatives on the platform. So far, we have over 350 student representatives from around 70 UK universities and provide services to 300 prospective students and growing. This was a great experience, being able to work with my friends and do something that would be incredibly helpful to prospective students.