Summer placement student. Review

My colleagues were really friendly, helpful and supportive. They made every effort to include me, get to know me and ensure I was finding everything OK. I felt like a regular team member rather than ‘just’ a summer placement student. I also felt like they valued my work and my opinions.

If I asked for support and guidance it was available to me and everyone I was working with were willing to help. However I like to work independently and follow through my own ideas, if I didn’t ask for guidance I was left to work at my own pace and trusted to do things my own way. I really valued this independence.

I had my own project which was quite isolated so I never had any meetings or appointments to make my day busy. The nature of the project was that it was very unlikely to be completed during my short placement, so rather than having a particular deadline, it was ‘get as much done as you can in the time you have’. This meant my work was very self-motivated and how busy I was depended on how well the project was going; when I was at a particularly interesting part and everything was running smoothly, my days were full and went fast. When I ran into technical problems I had some very slow days whilst these were getting sorted since I only had the one project.

I was responsible for my own work and my own science: no one was checking up on my calculations or data entry. However I’m sure they would have been checked if I had flagged up anything unexpected. Since nothing I was doing had a direct effect on anyone else’s work I felt I had little responsibility.

I didn’t really receive any training, but I was able to put a lot of the skills I learnt at university into practise in real life situations. In particular I was able to develop my computer programming, technical and data analysis skills and have a better appreciation of how they are used in a non-academic workplace.

I thought the scheme was very well organised. The job advertisement and interviews were well in advance and I was advised of my appointment a long way in advance. The dates of the placement were flexible and the staff extremely helpful when I called to ask for more information before I started. The IT induction on my first day was seamless (!), the project was well prepared and I was able to start work on my project by lunchtime on the first day.

I felt that the company didn’t really invest in my training or development at all. Perhaps I could have done more to find opportunities for myself, but the one time I came across a training day which was specifically targeted at summer placement students across the organisation, my line manager would not authorise my attendance as it wasn’t directly relevant to the project I was doing.

Even though most of my colleagues were slightly older than me and had been living in the area for a long time, I found I could socialise with them and socialised outside of work with them on several occasions throughout my placement. There weren’t any graduates close to my age when I started, but I was given the impression that there is normally a good social scene when graduates start there together.

I think this question depends on where you’re used to. Coming from the north I found Salisbury area quite an expensive one. However it’s much cheaper than living in London. One thing to note is that the site is far away from any residential areas, so the cost of daily transport to the site should be considered.

Salisbury is a very quiet town. If you’re looking for bars and clubs and wild city night-life; there isn’t any. However there are lots of nice pubs and great places to eat and go for drinks which I really enjoyed. I think Southampton would be the closest place to go to or a ‘city’ night-life and it is a good hour away.