First Meeting
30th of January
When I went to this first meeting I was very nervous. I didn’t know who else had gotten in, what they would be like and which ones I’d be travelling with. The staff were wonderful though and reassured us that on something like this it is okay to be nervous, it’s normal and you should remember that too! It was at this meeting that I really began to understand how exciting this prospect was. Global Insights brings together a lot of different areas of the university such as; the careers, Edinburgh Global, Widening Participation Team, and Insurance but I’m sure there may have been more people than that. Everyone was so nice and welcoming as we waited for the event to start. They had a wee chat with us to make sure we were alright, it put me at ease instantly. It was due to the relaxed approach that I began to relax as it didn’t seem too formal or scary. Quite a few of them were quick to congratulate us on getting a space which felt really rewarding and boosted my confidence. If I were to go to this 1st meeting again I think I’d try and talk to more people at the start of the night rather than waiting until we got into our groups. One person who we spoke to was Neil from the Widening Participation Team, he spoke to us about the many opportunities that we would have to develop different skills. He also taught us about the Reflective Learning Practice. That would help us to learn (I will write more on this reflection in my post about starting a Personal Development Action Plan). It was at this point we got to meet our groups. Each of us were given an envelope with a section of a photo (as I was going to London my photo was of the London landscape) we then had to find the people with the matching parts. This was quite a good way to meet them as trying to work it out got us talking not just to our group but the others as well. After we’d had a little bit of time to chat and get to know each other the leaders went into more information about what we should expect. Although a lot of this was repetition from the application I found it quite useful as they now had a few dates they were able to give us. I found it useful to take notes in a notebook I had brought whilst some others took notes on their phone. Don’t worry if you don’t do this though, we were provided with a handout ‘Preparing for Global Insights’ This went through things like funding (each city gets a different amount), insurance and other things like that. Finally, they had us do an exercise on team building to see how we would work as a group. It was quite simple trying to decide what your strengths and weaknesses were. Depending on our answers meant that you were either an action, thinking or social team member. My group was quite lucky as out of the five of us we had someone who was each type. This exercise was good for first meetings as it gave us some information on each other but also helped us to think about how, as a group, we might struggle with somethings more than others.
