Gurpreet Kaur

Today I went to grab an application form to participate in “The National Mentoring Consortium”. This is an organisation which provides mentoring for the UK ethnic minority students to help out in making the transition from study into the graduate employment. This scheme is to help ethnic minorities to gain understanding and mentoring of how to take actual graduate interviews and to generally know what to do and what not to do during seeking graduate jobs or even placements.

The National Mentoring Consortium at Portsmouth were looking for eligible 2nd year students who would like to participate.I found this a great opportunity as it will give me a better understanding of how to gain jobs in the outside working atmosphere.

I will be matched with a mentor from a working industry who will try helping me gain the skills needed in improving my studies as well as the skills needed to gain the important first post after graduation.

From the information given I found this really interesting and I think it is a great opportunity as it is a free mentoring scheme. where I can gain free knowledge.

Following on from my previous post.

…Today (Tuesday) was a very busy and a long day I must say .

My day started off at 10.00am with a tutorial in the morning for my unit called An Introduction to Software Engineering (SEINT). It was a very interesting tutorial I must say. I quite enjoyed it

At 13.00 for two hours up until 15.00 was a lecture in SEINT. Which introduced the coursework task already we have to carry out. A mini lecture presentation for up to 8/10 minutes explaining about a topic linked with Software Engineering.

Finally the last tutorial of the day was from 16.00 up until 18.00, another 2 hours. My goodness ! This was in a unit called Intermediate Systems Analysis and Design (INSAD). Again another interesting unit. With an amazing lecturer. (Quite funny as well )

This week we’re back at uni starting our first proper lectures and tutorials.

I can finally say YEAR 2 ! I thought I wont make it this far but my gawd I did after all the hurdles I had to jump over !

As I explained in my post this morning, this week is the first week of proper lectures, last week we had an induction week just introducing the units we will be doing.

Today, is a Monday and we generally didn’t have any lectures, we only have a drop in session for one of our self taught units called DBASE20 (Database). So not bad really.

So far so good !!

This week is the start to our induction week at Uni. We don’t start any lectures or tutorials until next week, but this doesn’t mean that the induction week isn’t important. This is the reason why I have to go into University this week. Just in case I miss out on anything important. Despite having our first Akhandpaht open (Arambh) this Wednesday.

It felt really strange to see so many students again (I mean it was more than 4 months not seeing students around campus anymore). But the first year students trying to find their way around were absolute flashbacks when I was a first year. Not knowing the way around, getting lost at certain places.

…I remember my first day at University in my first year. How couldn’t I remember? It was my birthday that year 2^nd October 2006. And what a birthday I had. Well we (my friend and I) had an introduction lecture at Park building at 9.00am. Firstly we caught the train to University that day from Southampton Central to Portsmouth & Southsea station, which we reached at 8.30am. Secondly it was tipping with rain and it had been a whole 45 minutes just roaming half of Portsmouth town walking drenched in rain. (What a birthday it was). Finally we found Park building, and then realised it was a literal 2 minute walk from the station to Park building (What the hell?). Ha-Ha! Is quite funny now looking back to it but that day we were humiliated in front of hundreds of students walking in a lecture room late that consisted of up to 200 students just staring at two fools arriving all drenched in rain and late. (Ahh, the good times!).

So I kind of felt sorry for the new students trying to find their way around. Since I been there and experienced it all. Far more worse I would guess, at least today it was a nice bright sunny day with minor winds.

Since there is only one week left until Uni starts my friend and I decided to go into town and start to buy a few of our notebooks, note pads, papers and stationery. So it would be ready and easier for us the following week.

Being the usual selves we are we ended up looking for bargains and sales ( ha-ha! well we are students) can’t afford to buy expensive items. So we went into WHSmith as they had a 70% off sale (WHOW 70%) !

We ended up buying 3 different types of folders for all of our new subjects (as we only have 3 subjects in the first semester of the year). We argued over the different colours that the folders were available in. They all looked brilliant.

I also was in need to buy a diary, for personal use as the Uni planner’s aren’t so organised as I imagined. I required more writing space within the week rather than 1 week all cramped up on to two A5 sized pages.

Okay so the timetable’s were meant to be out yesterday (Monday 22nd September 2008) onto our University portal site. But failed us miserably !

Today I e-mailed the CAM office (Computing & Mathematics office) so that I can find out what the induction timetable would be for next week as well as the actual year 2 semester 1 timetable. I was told that the timetable’s were up since Monday and we could access them, however since I was having trouble viewing my timetable I had to e-mail the CAM support office who were in charge of timetable’s.

They resolved my problem by attaching my timetable to me via e-mail. Even though there was slight confusion over the options I took for my second year, but it was all sorted finally. - Thank God !

What a busy day it was today again !

It was yet another University of Portsmouth preview day, I must say the weather was lovely this time round. Last preview day it was a miserable rainy day and everyone got soaked in the rain. But this time round we had the sun out !

For the first half of the preview day I was put onto the halls tour guide at Harry Law Halls. Which meant I was leading a group of visitors at once talking about staying in halls, what facilities you gain, prices, and just answering general queries regarding halls/accommodation.

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Less than 24 hours left until the next preview day at the University.

Today I was working for the University as a Student Marketing Assistant (SMA) from 11.45am - 3.30pm. Felt so good being back (even if I was working). There was a slight confusion with the timings though. I received an e-mail stating I will need to come in at 11.45am, when in fact it was meant to be 1.45pm covering Front Of House (FOH cover) which is carrying out receptionist duties, answering telephone calls and directing visitors the right way including a few admin duties.

..So instead we helped out with the preview day preparation up until 1.45pm (when I was needed). We set up the information banners, and pulled out all the stuff that was required for tomorrow, so it can be slightly easier in the morning.

We managed to work quite fast considering it was only a small team of five people, and was able to complete the preview day preparation tasks by 1.30pm.

For the past two days I’ve been trying to convert my CV into a professional standard so I can start to apply for my placement, which I will hopefully take up in summer 2009.

I’m finding it quite hard believe it or not, trying to get together everything on two pages. If I start to delete parts out from it, the pages reduce and aren’t informative however if I start to add more information the pages go onto more than 2 (how annoying) !!

So now I’m plucking information out from the CV and trying to adjust the layout and transforming the font slightly smaller (even though I have a weird feeling that I will be criticised for smaller font, but I’ll give it a try and see).

Today I finally recieved my final student assessment letter, (even though it has been over a month since I applied for it). Everyone had recieved their final letters few months ago and I felt the only one who heard no response back.

Even though I received my letter there was still the same error in my surname despite me telling them twice before. Which now I have to go and make sure the error is corrected otherwise it may affect the payments going to the University.

This year I only applied for tuition fee (which gets paid directly to the University), I didn’t want to take out any loan as it will only cause me to be stacked under debt.