Adam achieved his BEng (Hons) Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering degree through our partner institution Wigan & Leigh College. Here he talks to us about his study experiences.
"Because I was working for my employer, I only studied one day a week, and one of the benefits of studying at Wigan & Leigh was that the smaller class sizes of around 10 students meant that we really got one on one time with the academics, which really did help. Throughout my studies I felt supported as I had a professional mentor to help me, but I also felt the support of the staff at Wigan & Leigh College.
Whilst studying I got the opportunity alongside the other apprentices to visit Parliament to attend the event ‘Nuclear Week’, which is dedicated to nuclear energy. I got a tour of the Houses of Parliament and spoke to my local MP, James Grundy. As I was leaving, I saw former Prime Minister Liz Truss walking past which was quite surreal.
I got the opportunity to visit parliament to attend the event ‘Nuclear Week’
As a partner student I had access to the University of Central Lancashire's facilities and resources, including the library. This was useful as students can access Engineering e-books and journals that can ordinarily be quite difficult to source.
The advice I would give to students who have an interest in mechanical engineering and are thinking about applying for the course would be to 100% go for it. However, you do need to put a lot of work in and it could be challenging, especially when my spare time and weekends were taken up by doing assignments and revising for exams. But all the work I put in paid off in the end when I graduated with a first class degree.
As for the future I am already exploring the possibility of studying to obtain a chartered engineer status. I’d also consider applying to study at postgraduate level, I just need to decide which area I’d like to do this in. I recently had an interview with my employer where I was successful in obtaining a graduate design engineer role and going through the whole degree process definitely helped me prepare for this.”
