Coming from Indonesia, this course gave me a lot of different perspectives

What have you enjoyed most about your course so far?

Perspectives. Coming from Indonesia and not having done any science-related work for ten years, my course gave me a lot of different perspectives on conservation from the lecturers, practitioners when we did field work, and from my classmates. Obviously, you will learn to "do science" in the course, but having different perspectives from different people with different backgrounds is something I enjoyed the most. There were so many case studies from Indonesian forests in our lectures. I learned how science would approach those cases and compare them with what happened in the country. It was fascinating and made me think whether it would be viable to do in the future.

What skills have you developed during your course?

I learned how to develop a science project, how to collect the data, analyse the data, write the report, and present what we have done. Basically, the complete package from planning to reporting. A new skill I required was doing data analysis with R. It was very challenging at first, but I am sure it will be very useful for my future work. I learned how to interpret the results properly and created graphs that look presentable with R, which is what you will do in most of your work. 

What are you planning to do next?

I will be back home in Indonesia, working with an international organization on wildlife conservation. I will apply the knowledge I have gained and make more science-based decisions in my work.

What would you say to a student thinking about studying this course at Sheffield?        

You will not regret it. The modules are very interesting and relevant to the current world's condition and needs. You will get an overview of what is happening in this world and how to tackle those issues.