{"id":1903,"date":"2017-04-26T14:55:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T14:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/?p=1903"},"modified":"2022-04-13T16:14:25","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T16:14:25","slug":"tom-watson-bsc-2010-msc-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/2017\/04\/26\/tom-watson-bsc-2010-msc-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Watson (BSc 2010, MSc 2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

After completing both his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the School of Geography and Planning, Tom Watson (BSc 2010, MSc 2012)<\/span>\u00a0isn’t ruling out the prospect of a PhD. For now, he’s happily working as\u00a0a planning consultant for Arup in Cardiff. Tom took a few minutes to share his experience as a Cardiff University student with us.<\/p>\n

The School of Geography and Planning<\/a> had a good reputation and seemed a friendly and positive environment on first impression (which proved to be right). The strong reputation of the School was important to me. I liked the idea of a placement year<\/a> as well, which was offered to third-year students as part of the course, allowing me to get a view of planning from the ground.<\/p>\n

I decided to study the MSc<\/a> when completing the final year of my BSc. I didn\u2019t feel entirely ready to jump into a job and I was beginning to really enjoy academia. I nearly applied for a PhD too but would have wanted any research to be informed by further experience of planning in practice so decided against it. I hope\u00a0to return to the University one day.<\/p>\n

The School of Geography and Planning and its staff are well respected and known across the UK. There is a perception that you are getting a good standard of graduate if you employ someone who studied planning at Cardiff.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After graduating I worked at Hyder Consulting as a graduate planning and regeneration consultant. This gave me the opportunity to work with communities and in neighbourhood regeneration within the context of a large multi-disciplinary company.\u00a0I left to\u00a0join Arup in June 2014.<\/p>\n

As a planning consultant for Arup, I undertake strategic research and act as planning agent for the submission of planning applications. I really enjoy the people side of my job, whether that is mentoring graduate staff, speaking with local communities or attempting to convince developers to make their proposals more ethical. I see planning as more of a creative and communicative discipline than anything else.<\/p>\n

My qualifications have enabled me to become a Chartered Planner within two years of graduating and I have consequently been able to get involved in some exciting and varied work since leaving university.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The final year of the BSc and then the MSc were my highlights. Having done a placement year in my third year of the BSc, the theory of the lecture theatre made a lot more sense to me by relating it back to my experience of practice. I have developed a number of (what I hope will be) lifelong friendships\u00a0from the course and\u00a0the School since graduating.<\/p>\n

I would recommend all students try and secure some planning work experience in the summer recess or before starting University. A great way to make contacts for this type of experience is by engaging in the Young Planners Network in Wales, which I\u2019m part of.<\/p>\n

In the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Games, town planning was an Olympic discipline. Whilst I have no aspiration of winning an Olympic medal in planning, I would like to play a part in restoring the profession\u2019s stature within society to levels similar to that of the 1940s and 1950s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After completing both his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the School of Geography and Planning, Tom Watson (BSc 2010, MSc 2012) isn't ruling out the prospect of a PhD. ","protected":false},"author":934,"featured_media":1916,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,73,38],"tags":[129,135,111],"class_list":["post-1903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-humanities-social-sciences","category-geography-and-planning","category-our-alumni","tag-cardiff","tag-geography-and-planning","tag-our-alumni"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/934"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1903"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2074,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903\/revisions\/2074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}