Last week, a group of Year 12 and Year 10 students travelled across the Irish Sea to take part in the Northern Ireland Science Festival for Science Outreach. The festival reaches 80,000 people each year and is probably the biggest event we are part of! The trip was an incredible experience not only to develop our presenting abilities and a variety of other skills, but also to help our goal of promoting ‘women in STEM’ to others in the wider community. As part of our four-night trip, we visited a total of four different primary and secondary schools, presenting seven shows. Despite it being a packed-schedule, we enjoyed being able to spread joy to our audiences and see the children become invested in the science that we were bringing to them.
I presented in the morning with a team of five other students and I really enjoyed this opportunity to develop and practice my public-speaking abilities as well as teamwork skills. Due to our busy schedules, we all worked hard together to edit the scripts to tailor them to each school, and sometimes even different age groups in the same school, and we enjoyed practicing with each other to get our presentations ready. I was lucky to be given the chance of taking on the compare role of the shows, a new role I had yet to experience prior to it. I was able to improvise in different situations and I enjoyed the freedom of being able to communicate with the children in a natural and engaging manner. All the schools welcomed us with great enthusiasm, with St Patrick’s in Derry-Londonderry particularly eager, having had an outstanding show from our previous team in 2020 – which was delivered in part by the School’s current Science Outreach Officer, Noor, Upper Sixth. We were able to win over our audiences and it was so fulfilling when we were greeted with lots of goodbyes and happy smiles from our audience as we ended our shows.
Aside from presenting, we were also given the wonderful opportunity to explore and learn more about Northern Ireland and its history, with walking tours in Belfast and Derry-Londonderry. We toured the nearby murals, with our guides introducing to us the rich history behind each mural and different area. Furthermore, we were able to visit Giant’s Causeway, which had been a must on Mr William’s bucket list since he wrote his undergraduate dissertation on how it formed. We were able to take lots of beautiful photos of the natural landscape as well as listen to the stories and myths associated with it. We all really enjoyed the unique hexagonal rock formations set against the breath-taking coastline and managed to capture some creative shots of both our team and our teachers.
On this trip, we also introduced our Science Outreach mascot called Cryogen the Frog (Cryo for Short). Cryo captured some of our best memories in Northern Ireland and accompanied us in our successful shows and sight-seeing. Most of all, it was so lovely to see the smiles of our teachers faces when we finally introduced our mascot and we hope that he can be treasured just like the legacy of Science Outreach.
Lastly, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Williams and Dr Pascoe for all their hard work and efforts to make this trip go forward and for how successful and memorable it was for each participating member. We all challenged ourselves, outside of our comfort zones and managed to bring happiness and knowledge to those around us. I thoroughly enjoyed the duration of this trip and wished we could have stayed longer. Whether it was the trust and support they had in the team or their unconditional positivity, they enabled such a fun and rewarding trip that will definitely stay with us as a treasured memory!
You can see more of the Team’s adventure on our dedicated Twitter account.
Yijing , Lower Sixth
