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In Engineering & Careers

Celebrating World Book Day 2021: An Insight into one of my Favourite Hobbies

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Today is World Book Day, which gives me the perfect excuse to dig into one of my favourite hobbies – reading. I’ve always spent a lot of time with my head in a book, and I try to read a wide range of styles…although I am guilty of often returning back to my favourites over and over again. I think reading is such an important thing for everyone to do as much as they can, which is why I wanted to share some of my favourites and recommendations to you today. I also always love getting book recommendations from people, so please get involved and comment your favourite books and authors! I’m very lucky in that I can read pretty much anywhere, so when I am travelling that is basically my go to activity. When I was a kid and we’d go on holiday in the car to France, I…

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In Engineering & Careers

5 Benefits of Volunteering as a STEM Ambassador: Learn How to Boost your Engineering Career

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Are you looking for ways to boost your engineering career, whilst also giving back to your community and inspiring the next generation of engineers? Volunteering as a STEM ambassador is an incredible way to achieve all three of these goals! In this article I will explain what a STEM ambassador is, five key benefits to volunteering and finally I will share details on how to join the program (when I’ve managed to convince you to sign up!). Hopefully this will give a great insight into the STEM Ambassador programme, which I have been a part of since I joined JCB back in 2015. This year I received my 50 hours of volunteering certificate, which I am very proud of. My STEM Ambassador certificate for 50 hours of volunteering with the programme so far As a disclaimer for my readers outside of the UK, this is heavily focussed on the British…

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In Practical Lifestyle

Welcome to 2021!

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So here we are again, in the midst of another lockdown in the UK and facing minimal signs of optimism about the year ahead… It has taken me a while to find the right words to put down for this post; I had hoped to be able to review lessons and achievements from last year and focus on a brighter more hopeful new year, but with the latest news it’s made that much harder. I knew we wouldn’t stroll into 2021 and the pandemic would be gone, but I thought that we might be starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel with the roll-out of the vaccine. Being put back into another lockdown for a minimum of six weeks has been a real blow, but I am trying to remain optimistic that this is the best thing to do to bring numbers down whilst the most…

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In Practical Lifestyle

Introducing “The Female Engineer’s Guides To…”

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After a really enjoyable and positive first couple of months as a blogger, I am branching out to expand on an area which I hope will prove super useful for my readers. I am starting a series of “How To” guides on a range of topics, which I hope will provide help and guidance to my readers. Some of these will be technical and instructional to work through, but some will purely be me sharing my advice around a certain topic such as how to get into roller derby… I absolutely love travelling and exploring new places, but didn’t want to start a travel blog as there are so many out there. However, I am going to start incorporating travel into my blog as it is a huge passion of mine and I love sharing my advice and recommendations on destinations around the world. I’ve been fortunate enough to get…

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In Practical Lifestyle

How to Build a Hedgehog House – Conservation Project

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hedgehog house in a wild corner of the garden

In July this year, the hedgehog species was classified as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List for British Mammals (Source: https://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/british-hedgehog-now-officially-classified-as-vulnerable-to-extinction/). This was a really sad reality check which makes us all realise that our natural wildlife in the UK is becoming more threatened as the days go by. Just take a moment to think about the last time you saw a hedgehog in the wild? We used to frequently get hedgehogs in the garden when I was a kid, but that’s something that hadn’t happened for a long time….until now! We were approached by the Shropshire Wildlife Trust who were carrying out a hedgehog population survey led by their Hedgehog Officer Kathryn Jones in our village. She visited us back in July with a motion-sensor camera which we were skeptical would catch more than the neighbour’s cats, but amazingly we…

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In Engineering & Careers

National Coding Week – Why You Should Join the Tech Revolution!

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So this week it’s National Coding week ??‍? This is an area of STEM that is relatively new to me, but I am really interested in it now I am delving more into it all. I have to admit my first exposure to the world of coding was hearing Karlie Kloss speaking about her “Kode with Klossy” initiative on Tim Ferriss’ podcast last year (https://www.kodewithklossy.com/). This is a free coding camp in the USA for girls aged 13-18 which is a huge driver in terms of changing children’s perceptions of coding and jobs in tech. For those who aren’t familiar with Karlie, she is a fashion model so she’s bringing a bit of glamour to the world of coding, but also opening up this discipline to her followers who might not typically have been exposed to the tech world. Over my period of furloughment I was successfully selected by the…

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In Engineering & Careers

How to Change Brake Discs & Pads on a Van

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Yesterday we completed a job that we’ve been putting off for a while due to not having the time and resources to be able to do it, so I am going to talk you through how to change brake discs and pads (on a van!). My van scraped through its MOT last year on the condition of the brakes, so I bought some new parts in the EuroCarParts January sale. If you know you need to service/repair your vehicle at some point, sign up to their mailing list and buy your parts when they have a sale! They do them fairly often, so if you can get away with waiting you can save a load of money. I got all new discs and pads for 50% of the retail price by waiting for one of their regular sales. We knew it was going to be a tough job so we…

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In Engineering & Careers

Mental Health in Engineering

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In this section of my blog I’m going to talk about the various tips and tricks I’ve picked up to manage a range of challenging scenarios, from dealing with a 100 mile daily commute to contending with imposter syndrome. This is something I’m going to continually add to as I think it’s a really important subject and the advice I have received over the years has really helped me. I will be sharing advice on physical and mental wellbeing, mindfulness and different support networks that are available for everyone to access in times of need. I hope that I can help people with aspects of their situation that they are struggling with, as I would like to be able to do what I can to improve people’s general wellbeing and try to remove the stigma from opening up about personal emotions. Mental health is a topic that is still a…

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