That's why
I like sport at this university, because you can always
just turn back to what you wanted to do or change your mind.
There's always opportunities.
In the time I've been here, I've seen students
go down an extraordinary number of routes, really, such a rich and varied
range of disciplines between performance, health,
working with recreational athletes, elite athletes.
We've seen students working in sports development roles, we’ve seen
students working in high performance, semi-professional teams.
We've seen students go into the NHS
with students working
across an
incredible range of disciplines, coaching, nutrition, sport science.
What I think is brilliant about this area
is it provides students with so many options
and introduces them to so many different subjects.
And I think as a result, then we get students who start the degree
with specific sort of ideas about what they may or may not want to become,
and then the degree programme opens them up to such a range of opportunities.
Hopefully by the end of the degree then they've
got a reasonably good idea of what it is they want to do.
But I think they do get exposed to a to a huge range of opportunities
and they see that.
They see that studying this subject opens up those opportunities.
I think the links that the different programs
within the school have got from a placement perspective really
gives that exposure of, as you've just alluded to there, in that,
somebody could come with quite a set vision of where they want to be,
and actually the exposure that they get from the programme about that vision
might then change their pathway for,
you know, for better if they decide that's not quite for them.
But this experience that they have
is really valuable and is where they want to go from there.
I think what's interesting for me is often the whole case for sport,
people come in because they've had a positive experience,
maybe rewarding experiences
through sports.
But like Lois said, you know, the
the breadth of the discipline, you start
to see the
application to other areas, including health and helping others,
and that you start to feel the reward that comes with that as well.
You start to learn about how helping others through this discipline
can bring a lot of reward as well.
And that's what I think helps others or some students to see
maybe the pathway isn’t sport, it’s another direction
once they're in the degree programme. Well then we get students who come in
who might be absolutely determined to work in performance, for example,
and they're determined to work in performance,
that’s the specific route they have in mind, but then they realise,
they realise because of the nature of the degree
that there are a huge range of opportunities,
additional opportunities and I've seen a number of cases of students
determined to go down a performance route who end up going down a health route,
for example, or work in health and exercise settings.
And it's nice to see that journey.
I think it's nice to see students realise the options that are available
and then on the basis of their experience, make a decision about, you know,
going down a different route.
Yeah, it's great.
And, and even through sport you can find health.
So sport for positive youth development,
let's say, as a sport development opportunities.
So using sport to positively
influence young people, it doesn't have to be exercise in health.
Sport also matches up quite well with
health in some career pathways.
So there are more and more
exercise professionals being employed in the NHS
working alongside physios.
So physio is more about restoration of function, restoring function.
But then what happens thereafter in terms of
longer term exercise prescription?
And that's where the exercise specialists are
needed in the NHS, but also beyond the NHS, you know, to
signpost beyond the acute treatments.
And there are more and more opportunities for sport and exercise science
graduates in those settings.
The rehab
programme in particular has over time, these past couple of years,
has really developed the connections that we've got with
private health companies who have been essentially commissioned
by the NHS to run these types of exercise classes.
So the prehab or, you know, or indeed the rehab of group exercise.
So we're finding patients have been grouped into post-knee
replacement, post-hip replacement, that generic lower back pain,
and they need sport, health and exercise science graduates
to deliver those programmes safely and effectively for the patients.
And I think there's a huge demand for that.
Yeah, definitely.
I think I can only speak from that from,
sort of, my perspective and what I've gone through with my current placements.
So I mean that's sort of similar roles working alongside the ERI.
So the exercise rehabilitation instructors
and a lot of what they do is surrounding sort of
not only the exercise side of stuff, but the education as to why
and that a massive sort of
area in which sort of goes a little bit, ‘it's not that important’ but
it really is, like you don't see it
until you get involved in that sort of population as to
how much you can actually teach someone
from reasoning of why we do things and the way we do things.
And even the basics of just walking and getting moving
and how much of a difference it makes to someone's life over
a longer period of time is crazy.
I know when I came in, I always wanted to go and learn physiology, biomechanics,
everything like that, graduate, try and get into like a professional rugby
club and like, work your way up through the ranks in that sense.
And then it was only until sort of my last,
last year when doing my dissertation,
I did my dissertation in
respiratory muscle training in rowers and cycling and
it was only until after that and I was like, oh, research, I've,
I'm maybe one of the weird ones,
I actually enjoyed doing my dissertation.
I was like, okay, I want to go into more study.
I want to go into a Masters.
And I spoke to my supervisor at the time and he was like,
well, we'll try and find a Masters for you.
And sadly it was in like the peak COVID time.
So like, we approached like, the rugby league
clubs here, everything like that and they're all quite closed off.
And then he was like, oh, there's a clinical one up.
And I was like, well, I hadn’t really looked
that into clinical before, so I was like, okay, we'll do it.
And then I've spent the last year doing sort of clinical research
on how we've been looking at like fan therapy, and like a symptom control.
But the sport side of it comes in the exercise testing.
So that's my side of everything.
Then we've been using the Medical School as well from that like COPD
and that kind of perspective.
But it's this last year has kind of opened up
the whole clinical side of everything for me to even where
sort of I'm now applying to sort of like clinical based
PhDs, sort of research jobs and all that kind of thing.
So I think that if I'd maybe told myself in first year,
I wouldn't have said I'd go into research, especially clinical.
So it was
thing that kind of took me by surprise, only until right
at the end of my degree when I kind of realised like there's
a whole new branch of clinical that you can go down the rabbit hole with.
But it was one of those.
I feel quite passionately about
sort of women in sport.
Like I had a recent trip to India
and I got to experience a whole number of different things,
working closely with the University of Delhi and Sri Ramachandra,
which was really eye opening, and that was actually set up
as a study tool through Hull Uni.
Being able to speak
to the students at those universities
really made me realise I'm actually very lucky
in just sort of
having the opportunities that I've had, sort of thing,
and talking to them about
their participation in sport was
very, very different
to the way I was brought up
and the opportunities that I got here.
So I think I'd like to go into, sort of,
I don't really know how to put it, but sort of women
in sport in less economically developed countries
and sort of, spreading
the message kind of thing that actually no, you can,
you can do this, you can sort of achieve anything you want to
and sort of,
sporting study tour type things.
It's it's quite an ambitious idea, but I think sort of
just spreading the word of actually...
Would that be like sport development in women's sport?
I think so, yes. And just sort of,
kind of, because so many of the girls
that I met whilst I was out there just did not do it.
There’s just no platform. Yeah.
And like they just, there just weren’t the opportunities within
the separate unis and obviously the University of Delhi,
it's like one of the biggest and the best in India.
But even there, the facilities that they had, you know,
like they’re good, but they don't have
that same opportunity that we do here.
Like I could quite easily wake up tomorrow and be like,
I want to start playing cricket,
and then I could go and join a cricket club like that, no issues.
Whereas I think
there's so many girls in the world that just do not have that as an option.
So I think
going into something like that I think would be really, really good.
Um, yeah.
My ideal plan is to have
just about completed a PhD.
Over the last year, so I've been applying
left, right and centre trying to get the right project.
I’m meeting my supervisor for my master's
at the moment we're trying to like create a project in mind.
So hopefully a five year period might just be towards
the end of the PhD. Post five years,
I'm looking at potentially either going into academia and like lecturing,
if I like that side of teaching, I need to get a little bit
more exposure to it first.
Bar that, sort of going into more of like senior research jobs
and just going that route of discovery, probably in a clinical setting,
but also having the same sort of skills and experience to also go
into a sports
setting as well, because research is research,
whether it's clinical or sports, some of the same, like, study design
and methods and skills are all transferable.
So I find that research side for me is sort of like the best medium
between, I can go clinical or I can go sport and
it will be very transferable throughout my career.
Well, in the last three years at university, I've changed my mind
on what I want to do so many times.
I think I wanted to be a personal trainer, a PE teacher, a researcher,
specifically in kind of nutrition and football,
working for like a nutrition company.
And now obviously I'm working post graduating for the university
and I couldn't tell you what I'm going to do in the next five years,
but I think that's half the
enjoyment, is kind of seeing where you end up and going
to university, almost given the keys to all these doors that you can open
and none of the doors are the wrong door.
I mean, I'd happily do any of the careers that I've kind of thought about
and I'm sure I'd really enjoy all of them but it's hard
obviously to take the plunge and to choose one that I want to do,
you know for the foreseeable future, and actually saying that's the career
I want to go down, but I'm sure as I kind of,
as I grow, as I kind of get more experiences
as I'm doing different things, it will all fall into place.
And, you know, I'll be able to say, yep, I want to go and do kind of a research
Masters or I want to go and do my PGCE and become a teacher.
So yeah, I'd say
I'm not sure what I want to do in the next five years,
but hopefully it'll be within kind of the sport field
because working for the university, I have really missed
kind of being involved in learning and sport and stuff like that.
So I think if anything it has opened
my mind to the fact that I really do miss being in a sporting environment
and learning about kind of sport and nutrition.
I'm in third year now for Sport and Exercise Nutrition
and still just as passionate about nutrition.
I did start off thinking I was going to go into sport
and athlete, elite athletes and their nutrition.
But as the course has gone on, I've got more
into the health side of things and we've had talks from
lecturers on the
Dietetics Masters course and dieticians have like
come in and shown us like what they do and all the people that they work with.
I found that so interesting and it’s definitely turned my head.
And I'm thinking about,
well, I'm definitely going to do a Dietetics Masters
I think, and then hopefully become a dietitian after.
But even just in that career path, there's so many different
like, branches that you can work with all different people on their nutrition.
And even if I do decide I still want to do sport
you can go into that afterwards anyway.
And that's why,
that's why I like sport at this university, because there's always,
you can always just turn back to what you wanted to do or change your mind.
There's always opportunities.