Twenty-year-old Rubia Khan of Preston shares her experiences as a student at UCLan’s Lancashire School of Business and Enterprise.

Rubia known to her friends as Rubi is also an active vlogger and tells us why she is also planning to travel to Vietnam in June for six weeks.

I knew I loved business so I contacted UCLan and spoke to an academic, Peter Ashfield, who introduced me to their business and marketing course. I fell in love with the course in an instant. 

This course offered the perfect coverage of all types of business functions within the first year. 

After speaking to Peter, marketing seemed like a career that would encompass my growing creativity, highly mathematical mind and my interest in the developments within digital marketing. With plenty of interesting modules including one where I could design a website, I joined the course. 

In my first year I had so much support from university tutors. Knowing a student is dedicated enough to turn up to all lectures puts you in good stead to build productive relationships, which it really did for me; these same tutors told me about other opportunities to get involved with because they knew I was a reliable student who could balance university life with personal life and achieve great results. 

During the summer of my first year, I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting at home watching Netflix. So with only a year of university experience I enhanced my CV by visiting the careers service at UCLan and went ahead and applied for as many marketing roles I could find on the university job finding service and other recruitment websites. 

I applied to a summer internship with UCLan’s School of Nursing: they needed a marketing intern to head a marketing strategy for a new service they had launched called ChatHealth. 

I applied and after a successful (my first ever) interview – I got the job. I had secured myself a 10-week, full-time paid summer internship through the university. I worked with many senior nurses and researchers to produce a fully detailed marketing strategy (which was something I was about to study in my coming second year) to increase the awareness, engagement and use of ChatHealth. 

During this internship I was also asked to join another project called the Neo-Natal Early Supported Transfer project, where doctors at Royal Preston Hospital asked me to design a logo for the project. 
I did this successfully and as a result my logo will now be used in every hospital in the UK. 

After getting involved with so many projects over the summer my tutors were very happy with my ambition as I entered the second year of my programme. They introduced me to opportunities that I might benefit from - one of which was LaunchPad. LaunchPad is an exclusive two-year leadership development programme open to students from different schools across the university, offering a select number of places per year to high-achieving students. 

The interview process was very long, consisting of a written application, psychometric tests, assessed group activities, a presentation, a five-minute pitch and an interview too. Again, I was fortunate they gave me a place on the programme. 

The chosen candidates then spent a residential weekend in Wales where we abseiled down slate mines and zip-wired into ice-cold water from 100ft in the air – it was truly an experience and a place where I have made life-long friends with similar goals and ambitions. I now spend two hours every fortnight on the LaunchPad programme where we listen to exclusive guest speakers, build on our leadership skills to access the best jobs in the market and much more. We also have the opportunity to go on an international trip at the end of the two years. 

Another opportunity called Journey to the East was also on offer to business students: a trip to China where students can see the culture, way of life, and how successful businesses and universities operate. The trip would have cost me over £2,000 however due to UCLan’s generosity students are only expected to pay £400.
You would think I’d taken advantage of UCLan enough, right? With my passion for travel and exploring different traditions, cultures and food, I have dreamed of travelling to South-East Asia. 

As soon as I heard there was an opportunity through the University to travel to Vietnam (one of the most beautiful places in the world) I applied straight away. 

The internship is with UCLan’s partner Pagoda Projects, the trip includes all flights and accommodation costs, plus an internship in the sector of your choice – which you will be paid for undertaking. This was a no-brainer for me. 

With all the opportunities I had already been involved with through UCLan I had many talking points during the interview process! I was able to get the internship and now I plan to travel to Vietnam in June for six weeks of experience, a wage and beautiful memories.

As my second year comes to an end, my plan is to take a year out for my placement year; I am pouring my efforts into finding a placement abroad – preferably Singapore. 

After this, I will be in my third year. I would like to pursue the digital marketing route, where I can grasp the ever-changing discipline to build experience with SEO, Google ranking, website production and social media marketing. 
Because I’m a person who forgets things if I don’t write them down, I decided to use the skills I’ve developed in website production to produce a website for myself. I highlight my life growing up, my experiences over the past 18 months, my key achievements and future projects I have lined up. 

Keep a look out on my social media because I will be uploading vlogs about my journey to both China and Vietnam soon!

Find out more about Rubia at www.RubiaKhan.com  IG: @_RubyKhan_ Twitter: @_RubyKhan_

Experiences like those of Rubi represent the possibilities on offer through studying with the Lancashire School of Business and Enterprise.  Be that in accounting and finance; business and management; marketing; economics; or tourism, hospitality and event management; the University of Central Lancashire is ready to help build your future with you. 
For more information visit  uclan.ac.uk/schools/business or get in touch with the Course Enquiries team: cenquiries@uclan.ac.uk or 01772 892400.