Katheryn Foxton (She/Her)

Cat is taking the Imperial Award. After completing her undergraduate geography degree at the University of Southampton she took some time out to work and go travelling where she worked on biodiversity projects in Africa. Now she is doing her master’s she needs to plan for her career. She is taking the Imperial Award to help her develop a broader portfolio so she can apply for work with NGOs in the UK. She has an SPLD which made her UG course difficult and would like to use IA as a way to make that more positive.

She has chosen the following attributes to write about in her portfolio

• Proactivity
• Collaboration
• Open Mindedness
• Global Mindset

and she would like to reflect on the following experiences

• She has been working through some sections of Attributes and Aspirations, particularly time-management, and CVs and Application forms and is thinking that she will implement some of this learning and reflect on it for one of her submissions.
• She has written her CV and is actively looking for a graduate job, which takes a lot of time and she finds the rejections difficult.
• She doesn’t have time for extra activities but will use past experiences.
• She is dyslexic but has a number of strategies to cope with it.
• She enjoys being outdoors and doing conservation work.

Cat suspected that she was dyslexic while doing her undergraduate programme but coped ok. Since starting her master’s she has been having more problems so she reached out to the Disability Advisory Service (DAS). She went for an SpLD assessment and was identified as having dyslexia, dyspraxia and characteristics of ADHD. She got one-to-one study support from an SpLD tutor and now helps DAS by promoting the service to other students who might find it really useful. Visit the DAS site for more information.