First impressions

Life as a student again is definitely a case of so far, so good. The plan seems to be to ease us into academic life fairly gently, which is great. At the moment, the emphasis is on getting everyone up to a reasonably competent and confident level in basic skills such as IT and research methods. We’re definitely getting time to adjust to our new life as undergraduates on the foundation degree.

I think the biggest challenge is going to be finding time to study as I will still be working full time as a client support officer for an apprenticeship scheme being run by Burngreave New Deal for Communities in Sheffield. But ultimately that’s why I’m here – to improve my ability to do my job out in the real world.

I’ve built up lots of experience in my current job and now I want to back up those skills with more knowledge and theory. At the moment, my work is all about project delivery but my aim is to move into project management. Hopefully, this course will give me the skills to do that and help me demonstrate that to potential employers.

I’m very interested in projects aimed at meeting a specific need and, with my current level of skills and experience, I’m quite good at identifying what that need is and what my objectives might be. It’s the bit in the middle I perhaps lack – what I need to do to make it happen. I’m confident this course will help me plug that gap.

Hopefully, I’ll also get a chance to discover some new ideas along the way and learn from others working in different parts of the sustainable communities sector. I’m already getting a sense of how the course is successfully bringing people together from different backgrounds to communicate and share ideas and best practice. It’s creating a useful forum where you can begin to understand different perspectives.

We’ve only had induction sessions so far but my overall impressions of the course are fantastic. It seems really well run, well planned and the resources are excellent. The staff seem very knowledgeable and have been helpful. You can’t ask for better first impressions than that.

To date, I’ve only really got a sense of the course outline. I’ve seen the units and what topics are going to cover, but the detail has still to follow. My impression is that our studies here will give us a sense of how each part of the sustainable communities jigsaw fits together to make a coherent whole. That’s vital because although we all work in different fields – myself in employment and skills, somebody else in health, another in hard landscaping – all of these things put together is what makes a sustainable community.

This is the first blog from Lisa Butchart in a series about ASC’s foundation degree