Flood defence intern Review

Honestly, it was not an enjoyable experience but it was a useful one. It made me realise that this was not the type of job I wanted in the future. However, It had 3 or 4 really enjoyable days in the 4 weeks I was there where I was taken out to sites around Hampshire which were really insightful into the environmental field.

As quite a big organisation, it was hard to gage how well everyone knew each other, but especially in the department I was in few people took the effort to know me. I was much younger than everyone else to be fair but only became close with 2 people out of 20 in the department and hundreds in the company.

Most of the time I received no guidance and was pawned off to the youngest most inexperienced member of the team, who took pity on me and also used me as an excuse to get out of the office. I was given useful talks about PPE and at work safety though.

I developed very little whilst I was there, but watched how people interacted with the general public on environmental issues. I also managed to use some of the field trips as a case study for one of my essays at university. I have also been able to use some of the skills such as PPE, removal of invasive species and flood defence management onto my CV.

This was really poorly structured. On the first day they had forgotten that I was coming and had nothing prepared for me to do. This was a similar theme throughout the placement, and there were often days when I had nothing to do so I often ended up doing my own thing.

Pretty terrible. It was a lovely summer with beautiful sun, but the office environment was very dark and people didn't talk or enjoy themselves. It was dull and really put me off working at the environment agency. The day trips were enjoyable and much more relaxed though and made the office days slightly more bearable.

They didn't at all. They had no planned tasks for me, gave me no work that they would actually use in the future, no contacts were given for future help and no reference was given at the end. Very poor and a little disheartening if I had ever wanted to apply for a job there.

I had always thought that working in the Environment Agency might be something I wanted to do, but after watching everyone else work there and the work atmosphere, it helped me realise that I don't want to work anywhere like that. The work provided however did not provide me with a realistic sense of what they were actually doing.

It didn't really help at all. I think I probably saw a very limited view of what the company is like, as I was only stationed in a small department away from the main office. However, in there it seems closed off, impersonal and I can't vouch for whether the rest of the company was like that.

It wasn't un-useful as it made me realise that I didn't want to work somewhere like that. However, it did not change my plans too much as I am still trying to get a job in the environment sector, and am about to spend 3 months in Barbados working for a turtle conservation charity.

Travel to the office was reimbursed.

Absoltely none. Maybe I was too naive or shy to make the most of the opportunity, but I think at the time I felt like I couldn't talk to anyone about it as I was too young to think about applying any time soon after the placement, and they hadn't actually seen any of the work I could do.

I didn't see any networking at all.

I was taken out with the team for one of the paid days off they get to work as a team on an environmental action of their choice. We spent the day, expenses paid, trip to the isle of Wight to remove invasive Himalayan balsam from a river system there.

I think I got a particularly bad experience from it, but would still recommend it to someone interested in the environment so they know what to actually expect from an organisation such as this. I was quite naive about saving the world and this made me realise it would mostly be mundane work like other jobs.