Work experience helps student's studies

Our students are provided with many opportunities to gain valuable work experience. Jedd Brierley enjoyed a productive summer, attending the 10th Cycling and Society Annual Symposium at Tyn Dwr Outdoor Centre and progressing his Dissertation.

Jedd believes the experience will be invaluable to his studies: "My summer work experience provided excellent opportunities for researching into my Dissertation subject of female participation in mountain-biking.

"Having a whole new batch of trainee instructors to query over how they perceived the mountain-bike community and industry was particularly useful. This allowed me to pick up on underlying themes and attitudes towards mountain-biking from both the female and male perspective.

"This in turn, along with the literature I had studied allowed me to construct a survey for a net-nogrophy. I was also lucky enough to be invited to the 10th annual Cycling and Society Symposium. I put together my initial findings, broken down into; method, themes and intentions. This really allowed me to showcase (if only for myself) what I had managed to come up with so far.

"It was very useful being able to talk to people about my work and hear their opinions. Furthermore, having a chance to just talk about my work was very useful in discovering how engaged I am with the subject matter.

"Finally, being invited to the symposium also allowed me to gather contacts for later research. The women at the symposium were perfect as they all rode bikes, but did not directly associate themselves as mountain bikers - maybe I can find out why? Thanks UCLan for the opportunity."

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