Adapting to working from home as a Graduate Intern has been both challenging and rewarding; it is not something that we have ever had to do before so the concept is all quite new. Given how much of the work we usually do at the Widening Participation Unit involves campus tours and engaging with students in-person, adapting the programmes we offer onto an online platform has been interesting.

One such event the team helped to deliver was the Senior Academy induction at the end of April, where we welcomed a new cohort of participants onto the programme. Typically this induction would involve bringing the students to Queen’s University and helping them get to know each other through ice breaker activities and games, as well as giving them an insight into university life through a campus tour and study skills activities. Unfortunately with current circumstances, we had to try and adapt our intended programme to work as an online event while still remaining as fun and interactive as possible. This proved to be a challenge but an extremely rewarding one as it highlighted the power of the internet in today’s age! We had a total of around 30 students who we split into different groups to get them mingling and interacting and played different activities; everyone got involved and it was wonderful to see the students engaging.