How to become an apprentice engineer: Jasmine's story

Jasmine:

I'm Jasmine. I'm 20 years old and I'm an undergraduate engineer. I work for an engineering consultancy in the highways team. I'm on the HS2 project, which is the new High Speed Two rail network and I'm part of the drawings team where we create drawings for road safety audits, which are just to make sure that the roads are safe.

So at school I didn't know what I really wanted to do. I was very academic and at A-level I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to specialise in. My parents suggested, "Why not try Engineering? You know there's such a wide variety of sectors. You can go into." So I looked into it and I went to a college specifically for engineering and when I got there, I just I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I really loved it. My college was very engineering focused, so we were used to learning on the job, doing more hands on tasks and doing the theory in the classroom as well. So we could see how that linked together.

When I went to university, I found that it wasn't really like that and I found it quite difficult. So I decided to leave and pursue an apprenticeship. I looked online at different degree apprenticeships that I could take and I found this one. I was luckily awarded this job.

Jasmine's boss:

Jasmine has brought a vitality, not only to the company but also to our local team. There are so many fantastic construction projects in the pipeline. We really need to make sure we've got to the next generation of engineers coming through to the industry. With the programme that Jasmine's on, we get the opportunity to see exactly what she can do and can give her that knowledge and experience that will be so vital to her in her future career, and also for her future studies.

Jasmine:

I thought that there's a stigma attached to what people think that engineers should look like and it's very important you know, as a young black woman, to have other black, Asian, and minority ethnicities join the engineering field. We need to gather all the different mindsets to be able to solve the world's upcoming problems. Don't worry if you're not the top student at maths, you're not the top student at science, because it doesn't matter. It's all about creativity and thinking differently having a different mindset to others. There's lots of people to help and to bounce ideas from and that's what's good about it.