Zara spreads the message to other women: Go digital
ATTENDING an open day pointed Zara Sheikh towards a career in information technology. She enrolled on a Birmingham Metropolitan College (BMet) Level 2 IT diploma in September 2015, and has just finished it.
Zara, 19, from Small Heath, Birmingham, says: ‘Looking around and speaking to lecturers made me realise what I would learn here would benefit me.
‘I talked to students about the course, what else I could do at the college in time off and what study and career paths I could go on to.
‘It was very useful and made me feel relaxed about leaving school and being somewhere new.’
Zara’s course highlights include collaborating with business and art and design students on a competition set by Amazon Web Services and Portsmouth-based children’s charity, The Roberts Centre.
She also joined BMet’s Creative Digital Career College programme, which is designed for those aspiring to work in the creative and digital industries.
Zara says: ‘It encouraged me to do my assignments as though I was already in work, problem-solving or producing digital and IT solutions. Earlier this year, my classmates and I were given a live working brief to create digital applications to go with a children’s book about homelessness. We made a YouTube film, game and a website, which I put together myself.
Zara and her team competed against students from across the UK, with their interactive design, development and business strategies chosen as the winning package. She is about to start a computer networking and security degree at Birmingham City University.
With women in technology in the minority, Zara hopes that her college achievements will inspire others. She says: ‘Technology and digital applications are going to play an even bigger part in people’s lives than they do already, so I think it’s really important that children and young people, especially girls, should understand exactly how their computers, mobile devices and other appliances operate.
‘It makes sense to me that more and more people should make a career out of maintaining, securing and improving the systems and software we use.’
For more information about BMet and its open days, log on to bmet.ac.uk