As part of our TY work experience week during Engineers Week 2020 we asked our placement students to write a short blog post outlining their experience with CONFIRM. We will be posting these periodically over the next month so keep an eye on the website for updates! Here is our first instalment from Aoife:
“My name is Aoife Kelly and I’m a Transition Year (TY) student in Scarriff Community College in Clare.
In TY I want to try new things and get experience as this will help me in choosing what I want to do when I’m older. I have an interest in both research and engineering and so work experience with CONFIRM seemed like a fantastic opportunity to learn about these topics more.
Before starting my week in CONFIRM I wasn’t familiar with 3D printing or how it worked. We got the opportunity to do a 3D printing workshop with some of the CONFIRM PhD students during the week and I learned how you use programs like Solid Works to design your object. We then saw how it gets 3D printed which I found very interesting. We got to design and print our own personalised keyring.
My favourite part of the week was when we went to Shannon airport for TechFeile. There were science and engineering workshops we could take part in with other students from different schools. This was really fun and we got to try lots of new things. We helped run the CONFIRM stand there and showed robots and other technology to students. We also answered people’s questions about CONFIRM. I really enjoyed this part of the week as we got to showcase what we learnt from the program to other students and we also got to meet other engineering and manufacturing companies and see what they do.
I would definitely recommend the CONFIRM work experience programme to other students as I found it really beneficial. I now have a better understanding of engineering, research and coding from this week. It was a great experience where I got to try new things and meet new people from other schools and in UL. It gave me a better understanding of what CONFIRM do and it gave me ideas for what I would like to do in the future.”
