Summer student for structural engineering in transportation Review

I enjoyed it when I was given quality and interesting work to do, which was a rare event. I enjoyed being here and all of the people who I worked with were kind and supportive. Most of the work was very tedious and boring.

Everyone was kind and supportive, being as helpful as they could with anything I was unsure about. Though sometimes I felt like I had been forgotten.

Plenty of support was provided by my supervisor, If I needed help with something they would try their best to look into it.

The first couple of days were busy doing inductions, then some days I had been given nothing to do and I was very bored. Most days I had been given work to complete with no clear deadline or sometime even purpose.

I was given a sense of great responsibility for one task which I had a positive outlook on. However this came to no avail and due to a lack of information and continued support eventually disappeared altogether.

I effectively received no training or new skills. However I did learn what it was like to be in the workplace and what software is commonly used. The small amount of information that I did learn about will probably not be of much use to me. Although, I did understand something very important; this particular job is not for me.

The atmosphere was relatively standard; it was not particularly dull because people were walking around and talking to each other. However it wasn't particularly interesting either. I noticed that the best efforts were made to make the office a more enjoyable experience such as fruit on Mondays and less restrictions for dress code on Fridays.

The organisation based on the kind of work I received was appalling. There didn't seem to be any kind of plan for when I arrived; once I completed my induction it took a while to get started on anything at all. The work I was provided with, seemed to be a fumbled patchwork of assignments which didn't seem particularly necessary. When I was finally given a seemingly meaningful and interesting assignment, it just fell apart after a couple of weeks, mainly because it hadn't been organised for my use. In addition, the computer I was provided with did not contain all of the software that I was expected to use each day, as a result I had to waste my time installing everything before I could start.

The company did not provide me with any kind of training for the assignments and works that I was presented with. I was able to do some reading myself about some of what I was doing through the company's main website. I was also able to voluntarily attend some information seminars. If I was having issues with understanding how to use software other colleagues were happy to give me a basic overview.

Although I am sure that the company may be a good place for employment for most people, I had not been given a very good taster of this during my placement. As far as I could tell, I would be at risk of having very little to do or not a focus on one thing in particular. I do not now feel strong about going into the transport sector (which is where my placement was based). I would much prefer also to be a part of a smaller company where the work is less spread out and the team is more close-knit. Because the company is so large, I found myself working on very tiny and seemingly insignificant designs.

There seemed to be an passable amount of social events which were available for the staff to take part in. I did not take part in any such events because in some cases it was during a time after work where I was not available. Also some of the events were based on football, since this is of no interest to me I could not take part in it.

I did not actually live in the area that I was working in. I lived 15 miles away in Salford which is a very cheap place to live and socialise in indeed. Salford is probably one of the cheapest places to live in the UK. Birchwood, which is where my place of work was, seemed to be fairly standard in cost. The staff café and local food outlets were expensive when comparing to university facilities but were neither cheap nor expensive compared to usual cafes.

As I had stated before, I did not actually live in the area that I was working in. I lived 15 miles away in Salford which is very close to Manchester. Manchester has some of the best nightlife venues available in the UK. Birchwood, the area in which I worked, is a relatively small town and is definitely not the place that I would expect to have nightlife. There would certainly not have night clubs and cinemas, though it would be possible to visit a pub.

There seemed to be one or two opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work. Namely a football event each week. There was nothing available which was engineering related, however there seemed to be some social events. I did not get involved in these activities because I am not interested in football or cricket. In addition, my travel arrangements did not allow me to stay behind after work.