In her own words, Alice Buckner shares her story.
At school my favourite subject was physics and maths, so I went to university to study physics. From there I enjoyed learning a lot about the subject but wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go in the future.
During the last few months of my physics degree, and while I still had no idea of what I wanted to do, the South-East Physics Network released some summer placement adverts. I interviewed for an engineering company and was accepted onto their eight-week summer placement programme. That programme was invaluable to the start of my career and truly helped me learn and understand engineering. Upon completion, I was offered a full-time role as a graduate engineer and started my engineering career!
Throughout my time in that role, I started to gravitate towards systems engineering as something I wanted to specialise in. I was ready to start progressing my career, so I began to look elsewhere for systems engineering roles. This brought me to NPL.
I’m currently still quite new to my role at NPL so right now my days consist of a lot of reading documentation and understanding diagrams to give me the full picture of the project I am working on. As well as meeting lots of new people and getting some fascinating tours of the labs.
There have been times when I thought I wouldn’t make it to my current position, but I don’t think many people have linear career paths. We are all bound to come across barriers and blockages. It’s what helps us grow. My biggest barrier was myself. I almost didn’t interview for the role at NPL because I thought I wouldn’t get the job. A good friend and great engineer encouraged me to apply – I owe them a lot!
My biggest piece of advice would be to be your own advocate. You will know deep down if something is wrong and not a good fit for you. If you want to progress in your career you have to fight for it yourself. You can’t expect others to make you their top priority.
It might be said a lot but you miss 100% of the chances you don’t take. Rejections and difficulties are bound to come your way but as long as you use those experiences to learn, you’re doing great! Never compare yourself to others.
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