Year 11 student Arielle attended a Women in Engineering camp during the holidays, hear all about the fantastic experience here

Kia Ora

In the term 1 holidays I traveled to Auckland to attend an engineering camp that Auckland University offered to year 11 students who self identified as female. I was one of over 300 applicants that came through by the deadline, and was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the 50 students given the opportunity to attend.

During the camp I got to experience workshops run by current Auckland University lecturers within the field of engineering. Like learning how to use boolean algebra and censors to code a robot, or learning how to design a 3-D model of an object along with the tools involved in that and then getting to print it out! We even saw how metal powder can 3-D print objects to help us in our everyday lives. Those are just a few of the workshops we had.

Over the three days that the camp ran we covered all areas of engineering, from software and computer engineering to wind engineering. It was so cool to have a set up such as this as it gave us the true and actual experience of what it would be like in our future when choosing to study engineering. On top of all the fun activities and interesting workshops we had current university engineering students with us throughout the days. This gave us the chance to ask them honest questions about their field, giving us that insight into studying engineering which I considered to be very useful.

It was such a great opportunity to experience. A great thanks to Fulton Hogan and Greymouth High School for giving me the chance to attend and for going out of their way to help me get to the camp physically, your support allowed me to attend such an event as this. For that I owe Fulton Hougan many thanks as without their generous support I couldn't have actually gotten there and been able to be a part of it.

I really enjoyed my time spent at this camp, meeting new people and of course learning new things. I highly recommend for others to take part or simply apply to an opportunity like this as it was one I’ll never forget, for my academic life and also as a fun, interesting, and useful experience.

Nga Mihi

Arielle Perchig-Gibli