From 22nd-26th August, we were delighted to welcome two 6th form students to the ReSET lab as part of In2scienceUK. Here the students write about their experience of being part of a research team and the tasks they took part in throughout the week:
As stated on the In2Science website, ‘In2scienceUK empowers young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve their potential through life changing opportunities that give them insights into STEM careers and research and boosts their skills and confidence’. Applying to this programme gave us the opportunity to work with the ReSET Project team at UCL, which was a great experience. We took part in a variety of tasks which were helpful in terms of personal growth, as well as in aiding the research team.
On the first day, we were introduced to the team members and the project: the designing of interventions to teach young adolescents interoception and emotion regulation. After reading about emotion perception and awareness, the aim of the research project was more understandable. We learnt more about the ethical side of research and gave feedback on what we thought would be more understandable and helpful for young people to know about before taking part in the research. After doing that, we created a poster that would attract potential participants. It was a lot of fun and let us be creative in what at first seemed like a very intense environment.
The next day we visited the Wellcome Collection and tried linking different parts of the exhibitions that we saw to psychology and wellbeing. It was challenging but also fun to create the different links! The Wellcome Collection itself was really fascinating and we learnt a lot while we were there. In the afternoon we got to work on our personal statements which was helpful in progressing with our UCAS applications. Getting it reviewed by members of the team who have already gone through this process was beneficial to us (and something we really appreciated!) We then had some first-hand experience with the tasks that the adolescents would be taking part in: The aim of the 2 tasks was to teach young people how to be aware of your own heartbeat and how to be aware of the emotions of those around you. It was difficult at first but with time and trials, our accuracy improved – which suggest that we became more aware of our own heartbeat and emotions!
On the Wednesday, we delved into the more statistical side of research and learnt how to use SPSS. After the quick introductory session, we did some tasks (and were pretty decent at them too!). Despite not being interested in the ‘maths side’ of psychology research, doing those tasks helped us learn more about all the different elements of research and also made us appreciate all the work that goes into psychological projects. After preparing some questions, we had a meeting with Profs Essi Viding and Pasco Fearon and learnt more about them! It was exciting and meaningful to learn about their educational experiences, current and favourite research projects, why they chose to work in research, what they wanted to do before psychology, and a lot more! They gave us great advice on university and choosing courses which’ll definitely help us in the long run. After our individual meetings, we joined a team meeting and learnt more about the research process. It was surprising to hear all the ethics and work that goes into research and it broadened our knowledge. It was also intriguing to watch the team work together and learn more about how they communicate.
For our second last day we did some blog writing and presentation making. This was something we had some experience with before but learnt more about, especially because we had to keep in mind that we had to cater it for a younger audience and that it was related to mental health research. In the afternoon we did some more personal statement writing.
On our final day we tested out more intervention tasks and evaluated them – talking about what we liked, disliked, thing that could be improved, technical errors, etc. This is a great way to get young people involved in research and how they could have a considerable impact on research in the future!
Our time at UCL working with the team has been a lovely experience. Everyone was super friendly, we learnt a lot more about research, gained new skills such as using new software (statistical skills), writing skills (e.g. the blog posts), critical thinking when it came to testing different activities as well as learning more about psychological concepts that we had only briefly covered at school. It was exciting working with and talking to professionals in this field. In2ScienceUK and helping with research is something that we recommend! Even if you’re not interested in working in academia in the future, it’s a great experience to have and introduces you to even more opportunities.
Thank you so much to Alex, Tom, Laura and everyone else we met for making this such a lovely and engaging experience for us!
