"I felt like I belonged in the profession I'm working towards"
Michelle Kelly arrived at Trades Hall on 9th September unsure what to expect. By the next morning she was putting the day to work.
"Instead of feeling stuck in pause mode or allowing imposter syndrome to take over, I feel driven, productive and excited about what I can build over the next few years," she wrote the day after this year's Programme Conference.
Michelle, who studies at Abertay University, finally met her mentor, Joanne Miller CA, in person. "We immediately got chatting like old friends." She also met Stanley MacDonald, who is further along the same course at Abertay and whom she had never crossed paths with at university.
"There wasn't a single point during the day where I felt out of place. Quite the opposite. I felt like I belonged in the profession I'm working towards."
The people they met was the thing students mentioned most. Foundation students are spread across universities, and for many of them the conference is the first time they meet each other. Klaudia Pestrowicz, in her second year at Lancaster University, spent the morning asking Yasna Heydariyan Zadbakhsh and Nathan Leach, both further along at Lancaster, what the year ahead looks like, and comparing notes with Molly Downes and Callum Prideaux on how university differs between Scotland and England. Nathan found time for a walk round Glasgow Green with Jamail Umar, a second-year student at Strathclyde.
Students brought questions, and the professionals in the room answered them. Yasna asked what to do about AI video interviews that turn candidates down without telling them why. "I didn't expect that question to continue throughout the day," she wrote, "with several professionals approaching me afterwards to share their thoughts." Kieran Donnelly, going into his final year at Glasgow Caledonian University, heard the same theme everywhere: AI in the workplace was "a key theme throughout the day".
Some of the answers were about how to carry yourself. Ashlene McFadden of iMultiply compared interviews to her Irish dancing competitions. As a dancer she felt the judges wanted her to fail; once she was judging, she found she was hoping for the best for everyone. Klaudia wrote it down: "The interviewer has been in your seat before and is not watching for your mistakes but instead they are looking for you to show your best."
Jamail, who runs Strathclyde's 93% Club, came away with a different way of walking into a room. Ian Mackie's session on networking "completely changed how I think about networking: walking into a room full of strangers will always feel slightly scary, but you find a way to do it anyway, and you stop overthinking it." He also found a picture of himself on a poster in the hall, and again in the programme booklet. "I couldn't stop laughing. It's official: I'm the next ICAS Foundation poster boy."
By the end of the day the word that kept coming up was confidence. Nathan caught up with his mentor, Craig McLaughlin, "who I can't thank enough for his continued support". Craig, for his part, has "no doubt he will be a leader of the future". Yasna put it like this:
"As I begin applying for graduate roles, I'm incredibly grateful for the practical advice, new perspectives and, perhaps most importantly, the confidence I gained from the day."
Help create the next success story. Your support is what puts students like Michelle, Yasna and Jamail in that room.
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