Sadia Shajdin, second year aerospace engineering student, is treasurer of the Queen Mary Aerospace Society. We sat down to learn more about the society and how it works.
Our aim is to promote interest in the aerospace industry and to connect students (regardless of their chosen academic field) with interests in aviation/space related topics, to answer their curiosity about high speed vehicles and expand their interest and knowledge through educational talks, conferences and field trips for a better understanding of the whole industry. The society is open to anyone curious and/or interested in the field of aerospace. We encourage joining the society in the beginning of the year to keep up with all events throughout the year. Memberships can be bought from the Queen Mary Students’ Union website.
To gain more extra-curricular knowledge about my field of study and get to know other students from my course and different courses who share the same interests as me.
Everyone in the society has passion in the field of aerospace, just as I do and are willing to make it as educational as possible by sharing their knowledge and research with each other while putting an extra effort to keep it fun so it never gets dull or boring. My favourite experience was when we had a movie night and watched a sci-fi movie and discussed our ideas and knowledge about space tech afterwards.
Because of various discussion sessions, I’ve been doing a lot of research on this field which is not only helping me in my academic progress, but also to become more confident in publicly sharing my thoughts and ideas. I believe both of these are going to be very beneficial when it comes to building a career in the field.
You don’t have to be in a specific course to join an academic society. The mere interest in anything related to the subject will help you fit in. In addition, we are always looking for ways to form connections with various space and aviation companies, which in turn allows us to explore interesting new places and arrange talks with representatives from large companies like Airbus, Boeing, SpaceX, etc. We also carry out fun and exciting meet and greets and let’s not forget the funky AeroSoc hoodies you get to own and show off being part of one of the coolest societies out there.