Careers/Work Placement  

Work Placement at WEHI

I was extremely lucky to be able to join the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research's (WEHI) first ever work experience. This was an incredible opportunity as I got to visit the largest and longest running health institute in Australia, as well as actually do science with my team.

The first day was a lot as it was a reminder about all the lab equipment and procedures as well as meeting the other students who had got into this incredible experience. The rest of the week proceeded as waking up catching the train, getting straight into the lab and doing science! During Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I assisted, emphasis on the 'assisted', the purification, buffer exchange and concentrating as well as quality control of nanobodies. And performed small-scale plasmid DNA purification of bacteria cells. Or in simpler terms, extracting Nanobodies from the insides of cells and getting DNA out of bacteria cells. 

Unfortunately, I missed the last day due to illness but I’m so very grateful for the Work Experience team at WEHI and the team at Infectious Diseases and Immune Defence for educating me.

SDS-PAGE gel, which is the quality control for the nanobodies. The video is a blue light to highlight the bands on the gel, which is yellow when it's behind the orange shield, the bands are proteins and the distance and which row they are put in allow scientist to see how the proteins have come out; quality control.

Jack Franklin (Year 10)

Work Placement at Moorabbin Police Station

From September 12 to 16, I was lucky enough to complete work experience at Moorabbin Police Station. During my time at the station, I was able to observe and work on various tasks including fingerprinting on a stolen vehicles whilst working alongside crime scene investigators. I had a tour of the police station and was able to look at all the different police vehicles. I even got to be driven in one of the police cars to go to a local school and watch a speech about preventing local crime. 

I also regularly listened to the radio between local police stations, as well as talked to people from all different departments of the police force and discussed what their job entailed. I’ve always been interested in working in the police force one day and this experience allowed me to truly understand the duties and responsibilities that come with working with Victoria Police. Overall, I really enjoyed it and highly recommend the experience to anyone who is interested in working in the police force. 

Sophie K (Year 11) 

Ms Stephanie Martin (Careers & Pathways Coordinator) and & Mr Jack Crameri (Wellbeing and Careers Counsellor)