Student Blog – Lin Jiali
I am Lin Jiali, studying Environmental management at Queens University Belfast. This year is my second year at Queens, so I need to undertake a placement in the light of the school regulation. I have many reasons to choose to conduct my placement with Lough Neagh Partnership at Oxford Island. First of all, when I first came here for an interview, this place impresses me by its gorgeous natural view. Thus, I think doing my placement in this beautiful environment will be enjoyable. Secondly, based on the recruitment information from the Lough Neagh, they require the intern have acquired the basic knowledge with regard to the Environmental impact assessment and Geographical information service. I have studied both of them in my second semester in my second academic year at Queens. As a consequence, I am able to meet these two recruiting requirements. Apart from that, I can also reinforce my academic theory regarding EIA and GIS by applying them to the workplace. The last reason is that this placement can provide various training by expert trainers, such as plant ID training, dragonfly training and internship will have the opportunity to carried out the field survey frequently during the placement. That means I will learn lots of new knowledge and gain the practical field survey experience in the period of the placement. So far, I have attended the three times of plant ID training, once of dragonfly training and bumble bee training, several times of grassland survey and one woodland training. All of these training not only have expanded my current knowledge but also taught me how to solve and prevent the issues that would meet in the field surveys. First aid training is the training provided by the Lough Neagh partnership that surprises me. It is a very considerate decision they made for the interns since working in the field have a higher possibility to get injured than staying in the office. Thus, the first aid training can teach the placement students how to react once they get an injury in the field.
As far as I know, I already learnt much new knowledge, which related to the biology and environment subject and obtained useful practical field survey skills in the past two weeks. I believe the following journey will still be exciting and meaningful.