A week in the life of the BPS
Matilda Farndon and Isabelle McIvor are in Year 11 studying GCSE Psychology and due to sit their exams this summer. They recently spent a week doing work experience at the BPS shadowing various teams, and have written the following about their experience.
02 March 2023
We are Matilda and Izzy, we're studying GCSE Psychology and hope to do A-Level Psychology next year at college.
Over the past week we have been doing work experience at the BPS, working with different teams and learning about how the BPS runs.
We went into the office in Leicester on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and worked from home on Monday and Friday.
Monday
On Monday, we were with the Practice Team who introduced us to the BPS, how it works and the different networks and structures, as well as the specific work of the Practice Team, who produce guidance for psychologists and support the Practice Board.
Our first task was to go onto the new BPS website and check the links on the practice team section. We also searched different terms to see if the expected results came up.
We were then given a spreadsheet with practice queries people had sent in. We used the website to find answers to these questions.
This gave us the insight of the amount and depth of psychology that is covered by the BPS.
We also designed a thank you letter and set up a doodle poll.
In the afternoon we were with the communications directorate, first with the Communications Team who do all the news stories and communications with members.
They asked us to make a timetable of national and international awareness days for 2023, for example suicide prevention day on 10 September.
This will be used for campaigns set up by the BPS to raise awareness on different matters.
After this, we were with the Public Affairs Team, who work with external stakeholders such as MPs.
They took us through the role of psychology in parliament and society.
We even had to try and come up with some questions that she could send into parliament to get them asked.
Our final meeting of the day was with the Social Media Team, who look after the BPS social media channels.
We discovered how social media can be used in both positive and negative ways, and also discussed how to make videos and posts on different social media platforms such as TikTok and twitter.
Tuesday
On Tuesday we spent the day with the History of Psychology Centre (HOPC) who look after the BPs archives.
We had a look round where they store all of the archives and how it has changed since they added the new shelving system.
It was amazing to see the real equipment that was used. Some of the tests we saw even dated back to the 1950's!
We spent the rest of the day cataloguing and organising old minutes from meetings (removing the oxidising paperclips and staples off the sheets of paper to prevent further staining and damage) and old psychological tests.
This is done so that HOPC staff know exactly what is held in the archive, are able to prioritise preservation activities, and can locate the records easily.
Wednesday
On Wednesday we worked with the Research Team, who support the Research Board and help with research for the BPS.
We spent the morning proofreading their Awards and Grants report, which entailed reading through chapters of the report and commenting on grammatical errors for them to be edited.
Later on, we did a spreadsheet to list BPS learning events, looking them up online.
After this we researched courses on Adverse Childhood Experience and on safeguarding as the BPS have been looking into creating their own and wanted to see what the market is like.
Thursday
On Thursday it was our last day in the office, which we spent with team behind The Psychologist magazine, which is released every month.
Throughout the day we saw how the magazine is structured and put together, how they do it now and how they will in future.
Specifically we looked at articles written by members, and how any queries or comments about the articles are dealt with.
The app was a small part of what we looked at but the work and effort that was put into both that and The Psychologist website is tremendous.
We think that as our generation relies more and more on technology, websites and digital copies of magazines are taken completely for granted.
Being at the BPS this week and talking to the people that spend a lot of time just to get all of the content together, has opened our eyes to how much work goes into it all.
We had the opportunity to write our own review, on youth representation of mental health and psychology in the media, specifically looking at TikTok and Netflix.
It's now been published online and you can read more about the highs and lows of mental health in the media here.
Friday
On Friday we spent the morning with the Careers Team who provide careers information and events.
They started with a presentation on careers in psychology and talked through what the Careers Team does.
We were set a task to come up with ideas which will help to get more people get into psychology and help people studying it at GCSE and A-level, like us.
We came up with some ideas which will be looked into and possibly used to help people in the future.
For the last part of our week in work experience we spent some time just finishing off some of the outstanding tasks from throughout the week.
Being at the BPS this week and talking to everyone has shown us the myriad of jobs and options available within the Psychology sector of career choices.
Thank you to everyone who let us join their teams.