Summer Student Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship and was able to appreciate the benefits it brought to me.

I was made to feel welcomed by all members of the team and they made me aware of how to make the most of my internship and my time at university.

Everyone in the office was very friendly and was on hand to help me whenever I needed any help.

Most of the time I was given plenty of work to do and only on a few occasions was I left slightly struggling for things to do.

All of the work I was doing was fee earning for the company and I was made aware of the relevance of each task I was doing.

The work I was doing gave me a fantastic insight to the real life world of civil engineering and how projects work which gives me huge benefits for my future work in industry and the rest of my time at university.

The general atmosphere was very friendly and all members of not just our team but every other team in the office showed a real willingness to make me feel welcome and I was encouraged to ask any questions. We would eat our lunch together every day and this allowed us to get to know each other better and this helped me to integrate into the team better.

My placement was organised very well and this allowed me to have a more beneficial experience and get an insight to every part of the job I was doing, despite the time being limited to 9 weeks. I had the opportunity to go on a couple of site visits, sit in on many team meetings and lectures, and also spend the day working from another office which brought me a lot of benefits partly in learning to work individually.

I had the opportunity to speak with all members of staff and they spoke to me about their time at university and how they got to where they are now and by them investing their time in me gave me a fantastic insight to my future career. I had the opportunity to sit in on what Atkins call "lunch and learns" which are professional development talks and lunchtime given by members of the team.

Working with Atkins is certainly something I would love to do in the future as my experience with them was very enjoyable and I learned so so much. The atmosphere in the office was very professional and everyone was friendly and very knowledgeable about their jobs, which is turn they used to nurture younger members of staff.

I was the only summer student in the office for the first 8 weeks of my 9 week placement but I was made to feel very welcome by my colleagues despite being a lot younger than all of them. We would all eat lunch together most days and went out for drinks together on a number of occasions which made me feel very much part of the team.

Thankfully for me the office was very near to my student flat so it did not cost me any more than I was already paying in terms of accommodation. However buying lunch in the city centre shops in Edinburgh each day can be expensive and going out to socialise in the city centre pubs and bars is also expensive.

The nightlife in Edinburgh is fantastic! Especially for students and even more so in the summer months. I study in Edinburgh so I knew where the best places to go are and I went to a couple of these places with some of my colleagues. Edinburgh is a very busy place in the summer and getting to see some of the fringe performances is something I would thoroughly recommend to anyone.

There was usually opportunities to go for some drinks after work every couple of weeks but other than that there was not much else that I was able to get involved with. There was a weekend site visit once to a site in Aberdeen which was very interesting but I was slightly disappointed not to be able to play on a work five a side football team or something similar.