A Successful Micro-internship
Current student Luke Hatton recently completed a micro-internship at Abingdon Carbon Cutters, looking at carbon footprints and offsetting, having found the opportunity through the Oxford Careers Service.
His work on the internship was such that College received a message from Abingdon Carbon Cutters to congratulate Luke on his achievements. Well done Luke for having clearly made the most of a great opportunity!
Luke told us a little more about his experiences below:
"I’m very grateful for the opportunity to have undertaken a micro-internship last March with Abingdon Carbon Cutters, in which I researched the effectiveness of carbon offsetting schemes. This is where you compensate for a carbon-intensive activity by funding an emission saving elsewhere - the classic example being investing in a tree-planting scheme to balance out the pollution from your international flight. My research was collated into a report, which I recently presented to the group over Zoom at their January monthly meeting.
The opportunity was advertised through the Oxford Careers Service, under the category of Sustainability and the Environment. This is a topic of incredible importance to me - I came to study Engineering at Oxford in part because of the direct role engineers will play in decarbonizing our society, and my desire to contribute to that in the future. This micro-internship particularly stood out because the description mentioned a book on carbon footprints - "How Bad are Bananas?" by Mike Berners-Lee - that had been on my to-read list for a while.
Following a discussion with Cliff and John from Abingdon Carbon Cutters after finishing the book, I chose to examine carbon offsetting schemes. We met up a few times over the course of the week to guide and discuss my research. Exploring such an unfamiliar topic, especially one so controversial in the arguments for and against, was incredibly interesting. Despite being quite nervous about presenting my findings to the 35+ members of Abingdon Carbon Cutters beforehand, I actually really enjoyed the experience. The discussion afterwards was also very thought provoking, with many good questions and points raised. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of researching the topic, writing up my findings and presenting them back to the group!"
