The placement was interesting and I learnt a lot, the other people on the placement where nice and my supervisor was good. The main disadvantage was that the work is often quite isolated, and you spend most of the day sat in front of a computer working on your own. This might suit some people but wasn't really for me.
Overall I enjoyed my placement with Dstl very much, I got to work on a variety of different meaningful tasks with many different colleagues. Every person I worked with was really helpful and always willing to answer questions. I got to go on two visits outside of the office which were great in supplementing my understanding. They have an organisation for new starters which was great - they organised talks to help improve our understanding of the forces along with providing the opportunity to meet new people.