Episode 68: Class of 2022 - Serena, BSc Biomedical Sciences

For episode 69, Serena talks to us about transferable passions, going with your gut, and staring at the stars. 

Multi Story Edinburgh brings you voices and experiences from the University of Edinburgh community.

In this season we talk to graduates from the Class of 2022. How are things going? What did they learn? What helped and are we back to normal yet? We also ask our guests to tell us where they go when they need to get away from it all and what do they do when things get a bit too much.

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All opinions expressed are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Edinburgh.

Multi Story Edinburgh has been created and produced by the Alumni Relations team at the University of Edinburgh. If you are interested in telling your story, please get in touch and let's talk.

Music from freemusicarchive.org: Since When by Mise Darling and Gentle Chase by Podington Bear

Artwork: Vector created by upklyak / Freepik

Transcript

[Theme music] 

Voiceover 00:12 

Welcome to Multi Story Edinburgh, bringing you voices and experiences from the University of Edinburgh community.  

Serena 00:25 

Okay, yeah. So my name is Serena Ozkan and I studied Biomedical Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and I graduated in July 2022. Now, I am working as a Campus Cycling Officer in Musselburgh, which is about six minutes out of Edinburgh. So, for three days a week, I get to go to the Queen Margaret University campus, and I just help people get on their bikes, I help them to realise the joy of cycling, and this has really come from cycling in my own time as kind of a leisure hobby. You know, I surprised myself when I applied for this. And I think that at the end of my degree, I felt very pressured to go into one of the kind of more traditional roles, you know, stay in Biomedical Sciences and kind of pursue a career in that, but I didn't feel like I was ready at the end of university. And when the cycling opportunity came up, I thought, this is a fixed term contract, it would only last until next year, and I'm not going to push myself for, you know, a career in something that I'm not ready for. And I think that's something that I didn't do when I started university, because straight out of high school, I'm sure that everyone can relate to the pressure they feel. So I really did take a step back. And it was on a whim that I thought, oh, “I cycled sometimes in my spare time, let me go into, you know, this job”. And I'm really glad I did, because the kind of way that you can use your skills from your degree to a completely different sector is amazing. I mean, you hear it all the time from lecturers, they talk about transferable skills, but they are real, they exist. And it's really amazing when you can, you know, apply them to something else that you thought, you know-- you just did in your spare time. The spin I kind of took on my skills was that my degree gave me a lot of data analysis skills. And it gave me lots of research skills. So before the interview, I had researched everything I could about active travel. So what I kind of pushed in the interview was the stuff that I had learned, and the way that I could analyse data, and the way that I worked with people during my honours project, and how I could apply this to the role. And I did the best that I could, and I wasn't immediately confident about it, but it seemed to pay off. We have an active travel team, and there's only the two of us. So I have taken on a lot of the cycle related stuff. So, I hire out bikes to students and staff, we have four amazing e-bikes, which we allow people to hire out for a month. I've done a fair bit of bike mechanics, you know, just kind of keeping our mechanical hire bikes ticking over making sure they're, you know, safe to ride. And also just reaching out to the Council, seeing how we can help promote active travel in East Lothian. That's it, I think another big bit of my role is making videos. And this can be small ones for social media. So, I remember the first one I did, it was what to wear if you're cycling in the rain, and it was a very primitive thing where I chucked lots of things on the grass in my back garden. They've sort of become a bit more sophisticated now. But I've done a couple of interviews with-- with students who talked about cycling, and we also talked about bipolar disorder. But if I want to do something, the great thing about this job is that I can usually just go and do it. There'll be lots of people there to help me it just-- I just need to have an idea and sort of see it through. I remember my last year of university, you know, being at Edinburgh means that you're around, you know, some of the smartest, some of the best people kind of in your subject. And I remember thinking, oh gosh, you know, I'm not good enough to be around, you know, these people, I'm not going to be able to get the same jobs as them, but kind of being in this role and seeing how I've taken my ideas and made them something, kind of-- it's something that's really, really rewarding. And I think anyone that works in active travel, especially if you cycle, you become very passionate about cycle infrastructure on the roads and it's something which inspires you to create change. And I think I can definitely take this forward if I go back to the Biomedical Sciences sector, is take that passion that you know, I usually have for my work. I sort of had this weird transferable passion where whatever work I do, I want it to be good. I think that's just kind of been confirmed by this role, but I'm a lot more confident in myself and my own abilities. 

Serena 04:49 

If I— if I was to meet myself back then I think I'd be shocked at how confident I am. I think I'm definitely not a completely different person. I'm still shy, I still get nervous just like I did then. But it's a lot easier to -- to live with that now and have it be part of me, but not kind of, you know, control me as much as it did back then. 

Serena 05:14 

I think it's-- it's a mixture of when I've done things that I didn't think I could ever do. So I mean, not directly related to my job, but before I worked as a Campus Cycling Officer, I worked at the Edinburgh Fringe, you know, and I remember thinking, oh, gosh, you know, it's going to be so crazy, you're going to be so tired. And it'll just be awful trying to keep yourself calm, and like fast-paced conditions and everything. And I think at the end of that month, and I said, wow I've just done that month, you know, being at front of house and I've really enjoyed it, that kind of-- it was a bit of a light bulb moment where I thought, yes, you-- you are confident, and you can't see it, that you are and you know you are. And kind of throughout my role, I've just been growing in confidence, whether that be kind of feedback from myself to myself, or from people kind of, you know, my colleagues.  

Serena 06:10 

Now I know in Biomedical Sciences, there's a range of graduate jobs, which require so much preparation, so stressful. If you're not doing that out of your own kind of motivation and your own desire, I would say, don't do it until you feel inside you that it's a thing that you want to do and a thing that you need to do. And I would just, oh gosh, it's-- it's so difficult to say this, because it's just been-- it's such a saturated saying, but honestly go with your gut feeling, kind of listen to yourself, and trust what you feel about different opportunities. You can't go wrong with that. But you never want to be in a position where you've entered a usually quite high, like, stress level job, and then find out that you don't really want to be there. It's-- it's weird, though, because talking about it, it's something that I'd never really thought about in detail when I did this job. Because you know, at the end of uni it was like a big scramble to get a job. And I never really questioned my motivations or how it might look on paper, you know, to another person, when I say oh, yeah, I did Biomedical Sciences, but now I work in active travel. And usually people are like, oh, why? And it's just-- it's interesting for me to then learn about kind of, you know, what came out my mouth is kind of what came into my head. And it's not something that I'd really thought about. Yeah [laugh]. 

[Theme music] 

Voiceover  07:38 

We also asked our guests to tell us where they go when they need to get away from it all. And what do they do when things get a bit too much? 

Serena 07:50 

So, I would say that my escape hatch, I'm very lucky to be like a five-minute walking distance away from a very, very big field. And I by no means live in a countryside area, I live in the suburbs of Edinburgh. So it's-- it's usual for me to be surrounded by cars and traffic. So, when I really need to get away, I go to this field, and there's a lovely walk down into the beach, but for about five minutes, you can just be surrounded by nature. And it's like, you can forget that you're surrounded by other people by, you know, civilization for a minute. And it's just you and the sky, and kind of Earth. And I think for me, that puts things into perspective. And that's something that that really helps ground me, I do have another kind of, you know, if I can't leave kind of where I live, or if I'm in a different place, which is just looking at the sky at night. I think there's something so powerful about looking at the stars, because no matter what happens, you know, in life, the stars will always be there. And they'll never go away. And you can look at them and be looking at, you know, heavens or the universe, whatever you want to kind of think of it as. And that's something which is it's almost spiritual, to think that you and probably many other people around the world would be looking at the same sky and having this kind of shared human experience, again, gives you that perspective. 

[Theme music] 

Voiceover  09:26 

Join us again soon for more voices from your Edinburgh community. 

 [Theme music] 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai