As Kings psychology students we often encountered a lot of opportunities that we found to be very interesting and educational at the university and on the course. Today we will share some opportunities that King’s has to offer.
KCLSU
One of the best places to find student opportunities is through KCLSU. KCLSU offers part time jobs, master classes, committee roles for various societies and many other opportunities. Other types of events offered on KCLSU include
inter-university webinars, workshops, and projects. Currently, a digital initiative called ProjectX is underway where students are able to come together to participate in a range of events and competitions focused on showcasing student talent. This could include showcasing photography skill, drawing or painting skills or even pitching a business idea for reimbursement. Participating in societies as a committee member looks great on your CV too and will make you more appealing and attractive in front of employers. KCLSU is a good place to start building your CV and career in general.To remain physically active, King’s also offers opportunities like BeActive and Move Your Mind during your studies.
King’s Edge
King’s Edge is another initiative of KCLSU. Here you will be able to find opportunities such as volunteering, internships, language courses and community organizing which all meant to help students increase their transferrable skills and their experiences.
Careers, Employability and Internships
King’s has a dedicated careers and employability team that helps students with CV, job search, applications, interview preparation and more. You can set up a one-to-one meeting with one of the advisors to review your application, CV or even practice for an interview. King’s careers and employability also have a job board where specific jobs are posted every day and you can also set up weekly emails showing jobs in your preferred field.
King’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship (KURF) and Research Experience Studentship (RES) are two unique research opportunities offered to students at King’s. In both roles, the student will be working on real world research with a leading academic in the field. The role includes, recruiting participants, admin related work, collecting data, cleaning and analysing data, inferring and evaluating results from the data and finally writing up a real-world research paper alongside the academic. KURF runs during the summer and is paid whereas RES runs during term time and is solely for experience purpose so is not paid. However, both experiences add more value to your CV.
Expert Lecturers
An interesting and sought after element of doing Psychology at King’s is its expert lecturers. Lecturers are specialists in their fields and have published numerous papers whilst significantly contributing to the realm of psychology. Academics are also very helpful and also provide numerous resources for students who are intrigued by a topic or are just struggling to understand a specific concept. In the first year, you also get to hear a lecture from Robert Plomin who is the 71st most cited psychologist in the 20th century for his work on genetics and psychology! The teaching style is unique too in that material is taught through a combination of lectures, seminars and practicals which provides a holistic perspective of the subject material.
Second and Third Year Module Choices
While you are quite often allowed to choose your own modules at University, what makes King’s quite special in the matter is the very careful selection of the options available for each course and simultaneously the flexibility provided in your area of focus.
While choosing one module or the other in the third year and especially in the second year does not mean your future career will be permanently decided, it can be a great way to get some specific areas and narrow your field of interest. In the second term of the second year you would be offered choices of courses such as organizational and industrial psychology which a course partnered with business school, clinical psychology and philosophy of psychology among several others. In addition to that you would be given options of skills where you could learn about qualitative research, programming languages such as R and Python and gain a deeper understanding of working with vulnerable groups.
In the third year your entire year is up to you to design. You will be given a very full list of options for semester one and two, for us those included economics psychology, abnormal psychology, psychology of creativity, forensic psychology and many others. In addition you would also write your dissertation, this gives you invaluable research experience that isn’t offered in too many other universities doing the course. For the dissertation you would be able to choose out of over 30 projects to do and get matched with an appropriate supervisor, there is something of interest for everyone and it is really an incredible opportunity.
Inspirational Research
As a psychology student in your first year, every second Friday you will get a unique chance to explore the different realms within the discipline of psychology. The sessions on that day consist of a workshop and a lecture from an invited guest lecturer. When I was doing inspirational research we had workshops with motion capture, fMRI, EEG, Genetics and many others throughout the year. All the lectures on the topic are conducted by world renowned researchers in the field who tell you about the nature of the psychology field they focus on and give you incredible insight of what it might be like to pursue a further education and career in that field.
What makes this module so valuable in King’s psychology is the fact that it is so practical in nature. As a student you will get a first hand experience in looking at how for example an EEG or a genetic analysis is performed rather than just studying it theoretically. It also opens up many different pathways for you to potentially pursue by informing you what is out there in different psychology disciplines.
Studying psychology at King’s is truly a valuable and fulfilling experience in itself. It opens up numerous opportunities for students not only in terms of their careers but also opportunities for their overall growth.
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