Student Engineer Review

Despite working in a slightly different department to that which I intend on working in for a graduate role I enjoyed the work I was undertaking. I worked with a good group of lads making who I regularly socialised with and continue to talk to after my placement. Living away from home can be challenging but having a good group helped.

I felt like I was gaining experience and despite my academic knowledge I have a lot of practical skills still to learn. My colleagues understood this and helped me to acquire as much experience of different parts of the job as possible without giving me an excess of mundane tasks.

I was always given tasks to fill my time despite some of these being quite mundane but they had to be done by someone. I was working in a very busy team so there was always plenty to do. On a number of Saturdays I worked overtime which give me a bit of extra cash on top of my salary.

I was given quite a lot of responsibility in general. There were many tasks that I completed on my own without any help or supervision after completing them alongside others prior to this. I was trusted to get on with the tasks and come back with the results after only being part of the team for a short period of time.

Much of the site related experience will be useful for my future career in gaining an understanding of the procedures and workings of an active site. The daily activities I undertook developed skills which will be very useful for my final year project at university along with helping me to gain a more thorough understanding of some of the theory learnt at University

We had a good team dynamic with most of the team being similar aged to myself we were able to have banter between each other throughout the day. The management team were very approachable and easy to talk to should there be any issues or points that needed to be raised. The office was just a small site office but despite this we had a good atmosphere.

I was told my line manager would get hold of my prior to my placement to arrange details and get to understand what I hoped and he hoped I would get out of the placement. Unfortunately this did not happen and I had to make contact with MyLearning for them to give me his contact number so I got get hold of him just a week or so before my placement began.

I was enrolled to a couple of training courses to enhance my skill set as well as undertaking all the site specific training that everyone undertakes. Firstly I undertook manual handling training to ensure I was lifting in the correct manner. I also undertook a plant and vehicle marshalling course where I became a plant and vehicle marshal.

I have been offered a graduate role with the company in the past few weeks following a successful conversion interview from sponsored student to graduate engineer. I intend on taking up this role and am currently in the process of deciding what contract I wish to work on and the location of my new role.

Most evenings I went to the gym and the health and leisure club in the nearby village with a few of my colleagues. We also regularly went to pubs in the local area and into the city for a few nights out. There is a good variety of clubs and pubs in the area despite the price being pretty steep.

The cost of living was not too expensive being able to find a room as a lodger kept this pretty cheap. Food and drink was very expensive though with a pint costing probably double what I would pay back home. The area itself is very pricey in general but being based just outside the city itself does reduce the living costs a little.