Kiwi/British PhD student Alice White reveals what she’s learned from volunteering with Eddie’s charity, and how the experience has changed her career path
I’m in the first year of my PhD in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and a member of Homerton College.
I grew up in North Yorkshire but moved to New Zealand when I was ten years old. I attended high school and started rowing in Hamilton, which took me to California; I rowed for UCLA and completed my undergraduate degree in Psychobiology. I moved to Cambridge to study for an MPhil in Basic and Translational Neuroscience, before being accepted to the doctoral programme in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences. I now work at the Biomedical Campus, where I study the neural correlates of decision-making in Huntington’s disease.
I chose to volunteer because I felt like my life as a student was becoming a bit too focused on me
It was at the commencement of my PhD that I started volunteering with Eddie’s.
Eddie’s is a charity which supports children and adults with learning disabilities and developmental disorders. I chose to volunteer because I felt like my life as a student was becoming a bit too focused on me. I chose to volunteer with Eddie’s in particular because I had some past experience in this area. At UCLA I volunteered on a research study investigating the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapies in children with autism and anxiety disorders. Eddie’s was also ideal because it had a range of volunteer roles available, which, importantly, didn’t require a huge time commitment.
When I started volunteering with Eddie’s I was also rowing for the University in my second boat race campaign, so it was important that I didn’t over-commit.
At Eddie’s my role is a family support volunteer. I am paired with a young boy who has autism. Every couple of weeks I spend a few hours with him and we like to go bowling, go to the cinema or play at home. Last year we tasked ourselves with setting up and decorating the Christmas Tree. In addition to giving him a new friend and some different activities, my role also gives his mum a break and some time to focus on herself and her other son.
I feel like I am finding new ways to appreciate Cambridge that a student wouldn’t normally get
The team at Eddie’s is so friendly and mindful of the best ways to help the families involved with them that it feels like a very worthwhile time commitment.
In addition to the innate satisfaction that comes from helping others, I feel like I am finding new ways to appreciate Cambridge that a student wouldn’t normally get. Spending time with the family I am paired with gives me perspective I haven’t found elsewhere; the student bubble in Cambridge is a privileged place to live, and it’s easy to get stuck within its walls.
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but one of the things I’ve learned from volunteering is how little I was doing for others prior to starting at Eddie’s.
I easily got caught up in my own schedule. With rowing I was hyper focused on my diet, my recovery, technical and physiological improvements, which is time intensive and exhausting. I would rush from rowing in the morning to the lab to cram in experiments and meetings before pedaling to my next training session. At Eddie’s I’ve found, surprisingly, that giving my time to others is invigorating.
Volunteering has allowed me to […] catalogue my interests and motivators without respect to grades and other academic outcomes
This experience has changed what I want to do after my PhD.
I previously planned to stay in academia and continue my research in a post-doctoral position at Cambridge or elsewhere. However, I’ve since considered how much I enjoy working at Eddie’s and also with patients in the clinic, and now I plan to apply to graduate medicine courses in the UK and in Australia. Volunteering has allowed me to step outside of my day to day life as a student and catalogue my interests and motivators without respect to grades and other academic outcomes.
I highly recommend students to do a quick Google search for volunteer opportunities in Cambridge.
There are lots. And it is not a hassle to give up a couple of hours each week to a charity – in fact, for me, it’s quite the opposite. I am finding that volunteering for Eddie’s is invigorating and I am learning new things that an academic education has not taught me.
Read our advice on voluntary work on the Careers Service website here