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Year 9 Careers Conference at Southampton University

This week fourteen students visited the University of Southampton to take part in a Year 9 Careers Conference.

The day was split into two different activities; in the morning, student competed in a number of events themed around developing life skills, led by Unloc. Students were tasks with three separate challenges that would help them identify key transferable skills that they could utilise in the future and help define their own career paths. Our students sprung to the challenge and managed to secure a 1st place win against the 5 other local secondary schools attending and were given chocolates, medals, and goodie-bags.

The afternoon tasked students with a Dragon's Den-style challenge where they had to create and design an app that would be for Year 9 students to find information about career pathways/ degrees and higher education. The students were outstanding and had only one hour to work as part of a team to discuss, design and present their ideas to a panel of judges. It was a close competition as all schools had created good ideas. Crookhorn students really impressed the judges with their pitch and were complimented on their branding, teamwork, strong presentation skills, and the amount of research they'd managed to do in the time given.

As well as the challenges set throughout the day our students got to enjoy some downtime with a campus tour led by Hazel, a Student Ambassador and 4th Year University student studying Space System Engineering.

Our students were all fully engaged in the day's activities, gaining a better understanding of the opportunities and advantages offered by higher education. They were a credit in representing the College and will hopefully be aiming to become university students themselves in the near future.

Well done!

This is what some of our students had to say about the event:

"I really enjoyed it, and it has made me want to go to university." - Alana. A

"The day was filled with activities and sights I had never experienced before, it was completely new to me." - Megan. H

"I enjoyed the trip to Southampton University because it allowed me to learn more about universities and how they support students. I particularly liked the challenges we completed and the friendly competition between schools. Thank you for this opportunity." - Cerys-Mia. J

"It was a great day and I had lots of fun doing the activities and I learnt a lot about the university from the tour." - Ellie. J

"The trip to Southampton University made me more aware of what universities are actually like, and how there are many activities to do when you are not doing work." - Megan. S

"I really enjoyed everything we did, especially listening to the alumni talk. I also enjoyed the Unloc activities because they helped us to work as a team, and we won! It helped me to realise what university is like and how you can be independent. I hope I can go to the University of Southampton when I’m older." - Mia. B

"I really enjoyed the activities that got us all involved in team building." - Henery. G

"I thought the day was very enjoyable and helpful, especially the tour of the university. Thank you for the opportunity." - Yasmina. S

"This was a fantastic day with lots of fun activities and an amazing tour of the campus. Thank you for this opportunity." - Elena. D