My Experience by Marcin
A blog fresh after finishing written by Marcin Matkovic on 24th August 2022.
As a student finishing 3 rd year I really wanted to gain valuable experience that would help me improve necessary skills for a future career. Unfortunately, the pandemic made it impossible to find any internships last summer so this year I started my search in February and I was determined to find an opportunity that would perfectly suit my interests. While looking for environmental science companies based in Aberdeen, I came across The Habitat People.
This young start-up had been improving biodiversity across Aberdeenshire, mainly through habitat creation and management; a concept that seems extremely fascinating as I’m considering a career in conservation. I got in touch
with David, the founder of The Habitat People, and shortly after that I met the team that helped me realise how ideal it would be to work for the company when I finish the semester.
Starting at the end of May, I became an intern for The Habitat People and I intended to learn as much as possible about conservation, meadow creation, UK native wildflower species, and carbon offsetting. Even though some of the tasks we were doing, including turfing a part of a football pitch
to create a meadow at a school in Auchenblae, were rather challenging, I still enjoyed learning the hard process of habitat creation and meadow management, while working with an incredible team. In June we made more meadows and ponds as a part of our wildlife gardening service, continued managing the meadow around Prime Four business park, attended the TUBS event, and had a lot of productive days in our office. My experience as an intern was incredibly educational as I learned so much more than I expected while starting the internship. I had an opportunity to discover how a
small business like The Habitat People is managed, including all of the meetings with clients, accounting, invoicing, website management, and how our work can be shared with people during events such as TUBS. Unexpectedly, at the end of June I was offered to stay with The Habitat People
as an employee; an opportunity that I could not miss and I happily accepted the offer.
Now as an employee at the company, I had even more opportunities to learn and use the skills I gained as an intern. With experience I was able to help create meadow habitats more efficiently and expertly. We also started converting a site in Peterhead into a nature reserve, which was a completely new experience that showed me another way of habitat creation and management on a larger scale. Hard work in Peterhead, maintaining more meadows for our clients, collecting seeds from native wildflowers in Aberdeenshire, and learning loads of wildflower species while managing our plant nursery provided me with an extremely useful knowledge and skillset that I didn’t expect to
learn.
Looking back, this journey with The Habitat People was a perfect way to spend my summer while gaining beneficial professional experience that was also greatly enjoyable, and that allowed me to pursue and expand my interests in conservation and protecting the environment. All of that was also possible due to the wonderful team at The Habitat People that made me feel welcome and only
encouraged me to continue learning!
