A Reflection on My Time at Youth STEM 2030

Back in January, I wrote an article introducing myself and my role as the new Communications and Administration Officer at Youth STEM 2030, joining a team of people from various and diverse backgrounds helping promote STEM to young people. Six months on, and my time at Youth STEM 2030 is about to come to a close. The past half year has been an experience that not only have I learned a lot from, but also one I’ve enjoyed every second of!

Before joining, I was looking for employment during my gap year between school and university to gain experience in the workforce and to develop practical skills. I discovered the role at Youth STEM 2030 thanks to Kickstart Scheme and was immediately interested! I sent my CV, got an interview and next thing I knew I was the Communications and Administrations Officer! As you could imagine, I was both excited and a bit nervous. Not only was I joining a team of new people, but there was also the fact this was my first job ever! So I did wonder if I was going to be able to do it and if I could do what was needed for the role.

However, after several training sessions, I started to get familiar with how things work at Youth STEM 2030. January was mainly focused on showing me the ropes, learning how to use tools like Slack, Squarespace, Scholastica, Clickup, Canva and Groop (as a remote organisation, we use a lot of different digital tools!) as well as an overview of the social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. While I did have some experience with documents and spreadsheets from my time at school, most of the things I learned during my introduction period were new and exciting! Mhairi (Youth STEM 2030’s Founder) was really helpful and patient with me, talking me through everything and making sure I knew how they worked so that I could do my role as effectively as possible. I learned a great amount of knowledge during this time, with a lot I can take forward into my future career!

Then, in February, it was time to put what I learned into action. The focus during this time was to create content for social media, mainly Twitter. My main goal was to increase the interactions, likes, retweets and overall activity on Youth STEM 2030’s account, so we can further our goal of promoting STEM and the SDGs and empower as many young people as possible. I did this by creating a content calendar, making a plan of the types of content to be made and when they should be posted. From announcements to news, articles to #ICYMI, audience participations and threads; the content I created was diverse, and included a lot of trial and error. All this was to strengthen the brand and expand our reach and impact by using new types of content that we typically hadn’t tried before! For some of the content, especially takeovers or article ideas, some of the team members helped by contributing their input about what they wanted to see and ideas on how to make our content better. Working with the team was an amazing experience and was very productive in helping in our social media efforts! Along with that, Mhairi and I also worked together to redesign the homepage of Youth STEM 2030’s website, as well as creating some new content ideas for our Instagram account. I learned quickly that, while designing may look simple, there’s a lot of work that actually goes into it. Some designs may take 5 minutes to make, while others you can spend the whole day working on! Through it though, I learned a lot about what makes designs appealing, eye-catching and the lesson that often “less is more”. 

After March, I reviewed and compared the success of the new social media content, and it turns out (thanks to takeovers and our threads promoting STEM changemakers) it was more successful than some prior months. This was great for my confidence and self-esteem as it felt like the work to make that happen paid off! By this point in my role, I was regularly writing articles for the news section of our website, including relaunching our Community Updates, shining the spotlight on the achievements of our amazing community. At first, I found the task daunting as I sometimes struggled to write articles that were clear and had everything that needed to be included, but with the help of some feedback, over time I developed my writing and evaluation skills to effectively communicate all of our latest news and achievements, and even started giving feedback to others who had written articles, which helped my own understanding of what makes an effective article too. Also around this time, we were selecting our next Editor-In-Chief, which gave me the opportunity to take part in interviews. I gained a lot from this, as I now know what it’s like to be both an interviewee and an interviewer; I learned what employers value in terms of skills and experience, the importance of recognising the different skill sets each person has and how to decide who would be the best candidate for the role.

By April, I’d reached the mid-point of my time here at Youth STEM 2030. Mhairi and I had a midway reflection to discuss strengths, areas for development and what the next couple of months would look like. With that came a new opportunity: organising a Research Conference. This was a completely new experience since I’ve never co-ordinated an event like this before! Having attended the Youth STEM Summit last year, I knew that a lot of work went into organising such an event, but I didn't realise how much work was needed and how elaborate it would be! My main role was to ensure that the Research Conference Organisers (made up of members from the brilliant Youth STEM Matters Volunteer Team!) were confident in what they were working on and helped out in areas that needed finished, as well as giving the RCOs any support they needed. Working with the team helped me with my project coordination, research and teamwork skills, which will help me with group projects when I start at university this September, and my career. There were some challenges, such as some of the members being unable to complete some tasks or some things being completed later than expected, however the team pulled together and got everything ready for the event. I was able to use many of the skills I had gained over my time here to organise the event, such as getting exhibitions and promoting the event. The work towards the Research Conference really began to kick into gear in May, with more frequent meetings and more work being done, such as getting speakers and sponsors for the event. I was still managing our social media, publishing news articles and working with the Youth STEM Matters International Advisory Group in addition to working on the Research Conference, so it’s been a packed couple of months where I really had the chance to put the skills I’d learned up until that point into action.

June was the month of the Research Conference, and that’s what I primarily worked on. This included researching and reaching out to organisations that could help spread the word about the event, promoting the event on social media and finalising the Research Showcase. Helping select the projects to be displayed in the Research Showcase and the speakers for the event (all of which were amazing by the way!) allowed me to develop my critical evaluation skills to review each submission objectively, tp select which projects we’d spotlight. During the week of the Research Conference, I helped set up the event on Hopin, by creating the schedule, adding the speakers, adding expo booths for our sponsors and exhibitions and helped to ensure everything was good to go. I gained so much by doing all this, particularly with my organisation skills as well as perfecting my emailing and communication skills. It also gave me an understanding of how much work is needed to organise such an event! The day of the Research Conference itself was my highlight of being part of the Youth STEM 2030 team, especially the chance to introduce our speakers onstage. Almost everything done in June was in some part helping to make the Research Conference the best it could be, and I wanted not just to say I’d helped organise a great event, but that it was an event that helped inspire others to get involved in STEM research and innovation. Based on the feedback we’ve had so far, I think we can safely say we succeeded and it was an awesome event! Although I did help with the event, a majority of the credit deserves to go to the Research Conference Organisers, as without them it simply wouldn’t have been possible. They have been an amazing team that have been an honour to work with!

And now, we reach the end of June and, subsequently, my time at Youth STEM 2030. Back in January, I mentioned that this was my first ever job, one that I was so happy to be given. Most people will have their first job at a supermarket or fast food chain, while I had the opportunity to meet and work with some of the most innovative and creative changemakers from around the world. While there have been definite lows and challenges, the highs have made them feel non-existent. It’s been an amazing experience and I leave with enhanced and new skills I didn’t know I could gain! I’d like to thank Mhairi for being there every step of the way, the Research Conference Organisers for creating a great event, the rest of the Volunteer Team for being so fantastic all the way and YOU for being a part of Youth STEM 2030 in any way shape or form.

I’ll never forget my time here, and I hope to see some of you create the change to solve today’s challenges and reach those SDGs!