Introduction
Hi, I’m
Sabah. I am a 23-year-old postgraduate university student studying a Master of
Enterprise with a passion for innovation and creativity. My Masters has
expressed a whole other side of creativity and exhibited how creativity is not
simply limited to arts and crafts. This blog piece will present 10 different
ways on being creative especially considering current times and how you can
combat a lack of creativity in your everyday life.
My Top Tips for Being Creative:
Building a creative atmosphere:
Often
we find ourselves stuck in a space that limits our creativity, the slightest
changes could make the biggest difference. Such as arranging décor and colours
to match who you are and what you need, lighting candles or playing music that
inspires you in order to build the best possible atmosphere.
Put down your device:
A tricky thing
to do especially now but that feeling when you don’t have to be dependent on
your phone or laptop providing a source of creativity is freeing! Going on
walks, getting ideas down to paper and having a chat with those in your proximity
will get your creative juices flowing without you even realising.
Inspire yourself:
Whether that be
music, family/friends or even listening to a stimulating podcast, never feel
like there are ever any limits as to what can inspire you.
Limit and stand clear of
distractions:
This isn’t to say watching Netflix and scrolling through Tik Tok
to lift your mood slightly and distract yourself should be completely avoided,
as sometimes it’s necessary, however too much of anything can make you sick and
one must definitely put a limit on activities that don’t really benefit your
mind and development in any way.
Enjoy being bored:
Sometimes being
bored is a blessing as it allows you to experiment with various methods of
creativity, thus you can then understand what you’re good at and what you
enjoy.
Stay healthy, stay happy:
Know that
you, your health and mental health should always come first. This will not only
allow you to give time to yourself but will allow your mind and body to be
energised and developed so that it’s quick in thinking of new ideas.
Generate more ideas than you think
you need:
It is always important to have a lot of ideas so that, when in front
of you, you can work through them and see what works. This could also be a way
to combine two and formulate better, stronger ideas.
Look in unlikely places:
Don’t ever
underestimate anything, an idea, a person, a place. Sometimes the unlikeliest
of places may be carrying the hidden gem you needed to succeed.
Finish what you’ve started:
Another
way of saying never give up, but it is important to see things through and not
leave a task half done as it may not seem to be worth your time. You may be
surprised of the benefits and feeling so satisfaction it can bring to you once
done.
Love what you do!:
Whatever way you
decide to be more creative, the passion and love for that creativity will
always be your motivation, your reason for never giving up and inspiration to
not make creative tasks feel like work.
Going Further...
May this
blog piece bring the creativity to the minds of the readers and allow you to
challenge yourself every day and come up with the thousand different routes to
reach that one important destination.
If you want to find out more about Business at Manchester, please visit https://www.alliancembs.manchester.ac.uk/ !
by YPU Admin on June 10, 2020,
. Tags:
AMBS, business, Economics, finance, HUM, Humanities, HUMS, international business, and student view
Introduction
Hi, my name is Shamaila and I am a
first-year student at the University of Manchester, currently studying
International Business, Finance and Economics (IBFE). I chose
this degree course after having studied A-level Economics and Business Studies
in college and fell in love with the subjects, so much so that I decided
to study it further at university. Luckily for me, I knew that I always wanted
to go to university but the hard part was deciding which one was the right one
for me. ![]()
Choosing a University
To anyone
that is considering university and being bombarded by information, I highly
recommend attending as many open days and fairs (even if they’re virtual) as
possible. I'm pretty sure I attended at least half a dozen open days before
choosing Manchester. When it comes to picking a university, whether they offer
a degree programme that you are interested in, is very important, but just
as important is whether you can envision yourself there. The environment, the
people, the culture of that campus has got to excite you and make you feel
welcomed. I remember quite vividly my open day for the University of Manchester
because I was running very, very late (if you know me in person, you’d know
that I hate being late) and so by the time I got onto campus, I was wandering
around aimlessly, but I remember thinking how stunning the campus was and I
felt genuinely comfortable. Normally, I would find it quite daunting being in a
new environment especially somewhere like a busy campus but seeing the AMBS
building, the Main Library and the SU building (where I spend 70% of my time
now), on my campus tour I could see myself here.
Why I Chose Business
I chose my degree course as I was
interested in the business sector, but I didn't have a dream job that I could
aspire towards. This led me to choose IBFE, as it enabled me to cover a range
of content. I was able to continue studying business and economics and gain a
whole new set of skills in finance. For a lot of people, including myself at
one point, if you studied a business- based degree, it was because you wanted
to start your own business. But I quickly realised that there is so much more
to the business sector. Often the words, finance, business and economics are
used interchangeably which is understandable as there is some crossover between
the three subjects, but they are also completely separate from each other. In
my economic modules, we assess ever-changing economic contexts and debate
different theories. In my finance modules, we produce and analyse financial
reports, with the mindset of maximising shareholder profits as accountants
whereas in business we aim to view the company with a more board stakeholder
outlook and study various topics, such as corporate social
responsibility.
Another feature of my degree programme
is that it offers an industrial placement year, which basically means I am able
to work in a company that I am interested in, during my 3rd year. This is
something that I am very excited about, as even though the content we have
learnt in class is important, I think being able to apply that knowledge and
see the mechanisms of the real world and how companies operate is more
important. Currently, I am aspiring to go into the accounting sector and work
my way up to becoming a chartered accountant. This is something that I had
never even considered before, with no previous background in accounting but I
realised through some of the modules I have taken this year, such as Financial
Reporting and Financial Decision Making, I really enjoy creating and analysing
business reports. As a result, I am currently applying for internships at firms
such as Deloitte, Grant Thornton, KPMG, and EY.
Going Further...
To anyone right now, that is struggling
to find a career that interests them, my advice would be to not panic. A lot of
people do degrees in subjects that they know they like and are good at, but
that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to go into that field. Especially now
more than ever with the amount of information available on the internet it is
much easier to develop a wide range of skills that are suitable for a variety
of jobs rather than just focusing on one career pathway.
If you are interested
in anything that I have talked about, below are some links for further
information:
Introduction
Hey everyone! I’m Charlotte
and I’m a 1st year PhD student currently studying at Alliance
Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester. My current research
is focused on student mental health and help-seeking behaviours.
“Wait a minute”, I hear you say, “that doesn’t sound like business”.
And at first glance it
doesn’t. I’ve had many questioning looks when I tell people I’m a marketing
student studying student mental health, but that’s one of the best things about
my PhD. I get to combine my passion for understanding and improving mental
health with my interests in marketing and consumer behaviour.
So, sit back and I’ll tell
you all.
In-depth
Before starting my PhD I studied
for my undergraduate degree in Psychology and a master’s degree in Marketing.
At first you might think Psychology and Marketing don’t really go together, but
I’ve always been interested in why we think and behave in particular ways, and
that’s exactly what Marketers try to do.
After my master’s degree I
worked for 2 years at a digital marketing agency just outside of Manchester managing
the day-to-day marketing activities of my clients including; branding, design
for digital or print promotions, advertisements, copywriting and campaign
management. As much as I enjoyed working in marketing, after a couple of years
I could hear university calling my name once more. So, I applied for my PhD and
the rest, as they say, is history!
But what exactly do I do?
Mental health has been
studied extensively, with particular focus in areas such as health, psychology
and sociology. Approaching student mental health from a marketing perspective, my
research aims to better understand the motivations and decision making processes
that encourage individuals to seek help for their mental health problems - or
indeed why certain people avoid seeking help. By understanding these decisions
better, I hope that my research can have an impact in improving the provision
of university support services (and the promotion of these services) to
facilitate help-seeking behaviour.
As I’m only in my first year,
my work mainly involves developing my research skills and reading more about
the different perspectives and disciplines researching student mental health. As
a qualitative researcher, with an interest in behaviour, I’ve never been
convinced by statistics alone. I’m much more interested in how individual’s
create meaning as part of their experiences. Qualitative research allows me to
gain a richer interpretation of experiences and behaviours, and how people
interpret these behaviours. One of the best things about studying for my PhD is
that as I read and learn more about my topic, my research questions change and
develop.
At University, for both my
undergraduate and master’s degree, the biggest challenge for me was always
trying to work out what I wanted to do at the end of it. Now, studying for my
PhD I hope to continue researching and stay in academia to teach the marketers and
researchers of the future. It hasn’t been a straight road, but then your career
doesn’t have to be - find something you enjoy learning about and career ideas
start to fall into place (even if you don’t realise it at first)!
A bit further...
If you’re interested in
finding out more about careers in Psychology, visit: https://www.bps.org.uk
For more information on
careers in Marketing, visit: https://www.cim.co.uk
If you’d like to find out
more about the courses on offer at the University of Manchester, you can visit
the links here:
Psychology: https://www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/study/psychology/
Business and Marketing: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/2020/03528/bsc-management-marketing/
The book that started to
bridge the gap between Psychology and Marketing for me was Robert Cialdini’s ‘Influence:
The Psychology of Persuasion’ https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Influence.html?id=5dfv0HJ1TEoC
The Drum is a website
dedicated to looking at the latest trends and news in the Marketing industry. You
can take a look around the website here: https://www.thedrum.com
Or
if you want to know more about the current research taking place across the UK
focussing on Student Mental Health, King’s College London (KCL) created a
research network called SMaRteN dedicated to improving understanding of student
mental health in higher education. You can visit the website here:
https://www.smarten.org.uk
by YPU Admin on December 25, 2014,
. Tags:
algorithms, applied, business, computer, cycling, finance, foam, helmets, industry, maths, model, patentlaw, pressure, and syntactic
Introduction
My name is
Maria Thorpe and it's now only 10 months until I have to submit my thesis for a
PhD in applied maths.
My route to a PhD
I moved up
to Manchester 7 years ago really excited to be going to university and studying
for an undergrad masters in maths for the next 4 years. I loved every minute of
my undergrad, but by the beginning on the fourth year still didn't really know
what type of job I wanted when I finished. I was still enjoying my subject and
I'd really enjoyed a research project I'd been sponsored to complete over the
summer between third and fourth year, so I decided to apply for a PhD on a
similar topic in applied maths.
In Depth
Since then
I've been trying to mathematically model the way in which a specific type of
composite squashes under pressure. I work with a material similar to syntactic
foam, similar to the sort of foam
cycling helmets are made from, however instead of creating small cavities
within the material by injecting air into it, tiny hollow balls (called shells)
are mixed into the foam before it sets, forming a composite. These micro shells
are created from very stiff, glass-like materials and help stiffen the material
under low pressures, but under high pressures they crumple like a coke can. I
want to understand whether having shells close to each other changes the way
the composite reacts to pressure: do the shells reinforce each other and allow
the material to withstand higher pressures? Or do they have the opposite effect
and cause the composite to squash more than if they were far apart?
The
company sponsoring my research wants to understand how their material works so
that they know how to improve it. It would take too long to try out all the
different ways the shells could be mixed into the foam, and might involve
buying new machinery, so it makes sense to model the material instead. Creating
a very flexible model means that the same model can be used for many different
applications, so I try to model the material theoretically, by extending the
models previous generations of mathematicians have created. This means that
most days are spent making very small steps forward with my research, but when
a whole section comes together it can be really rewarding.
Aside from
working on my thesis my PhD has enabled me to travel to some really great
places: I spent a month in New Zealand with a company having a go at the more
experimental side to my research; I've traveled to conferences all across
Europe; and I've spent three months working in parliament to learn how science
influences policy.
Moreover
these last three years have allowed me to discover all the ways maths is used
in industry and business, from patent law and government policy to computer
algorithms and financial trading, so that this time round, when it comes to
looking for post PhD careers, I have a much clearer idea of where I could go
from here.
Going Further
If you'd
like to read more about my research and that of the group I work with, the
waves in complex continua group, check out our webpage:
http://wiccwavesgroup.weebly.com
There’s
also an interesting article on the use of syntactic foams for deep sea
exploration here:
http://news.yahoo.com/finding-strength-reach-oceans-furthest-depths-225937623.html