It’s hard to over exaggerate how anxious I was about starting this internship 10 weeks ago. This would be my first paid office job and pretty much everything – from what I would wear to whether I understood enough about copyright was a source of worry for me. 

Looking back, I could not be happier with my time spent as Open Content Curator intern (a job title I have managed to stutter and mess up in every way possible). I have learnt a huge amount – from the obvious things that I needed to learn to properly do my job of adapting educational resources for releasing as OERs to things about myself and how I work best to how to make Wikipedia articles!

For example, who knew I would actually enjoy a 9-5 working structure.  I think all I focussed on when thinking about this before was that I would have to wake up earlier than I was accustomed to with my normal student routine.  What I didn’t consider is how good it would be to come home at 5:30 and be completely free from thinking about work.  As a student, you’re never really finished work and it is exhausting, but I found being able to switch off in the evenings really helped me focus during work hours.

I’ve also learnt about entomophagy – the use of insects as an alternative to meat.  As a vegetarian I can’t say I’m exactly convinced (I’m happy enough with my lentils and almonds) it is a fascinating subject and the weeks I spent adapting the resource about using insects for food taught me a lot about how to make educational resources.

I’ve been so happy to bring work I’ve done in the past in to this role, I’m a maths student and I really think there isn’t enough fun maths stuff for students to do, so it was great to adapt some maths outreach resources that I helped create a few years ago.  It feels really good to have helped make tangible things that are now out in the world that other people can benefit from.

Working with people who are really friendly and passionate about their work as well as being able to do work that actually feels valuable has been an inspiring experience and has made me feel a lot more confident about my future and my ability to find a job I can be really happy in.

Bio – Ana McKellar

One of our 2019 Open Content Curator Interns, Ana McKellar is heading into her 4th year as a Mathematics student.

Prior to joining the Open.Ed team Ana worked with the Maths Outreach Team at The University of Edinburgh running events of a variety of sizes that encourage interest in mathematics in all ages.

During her time with us Ana used her Maths Outreach contacts create new openly educational resources using the outreach materials.