Honorary Research Assistant Review

I really enjoyed my placement, the work had a lot of variety which kept me interested all the way through.

I had 2 bosses for my placement (which I worked on different projects for each). Both of them were friendly and helped to make my placement highly enoyable.

If I ever had a question I wasn't too sure about both my bosses were there to help give me any guidance I needed. If they wern't physically avaialable, then they were both just a quick e-mail away.

Due to the nature of research, sometimes there were times when there was an awful lot to do, and sometime when there was very little to do, e.g. when recruiting participants sometimes you might have a lot on one day, or you could end up having no one available to test for a while. If there was little to do though there was always time to do background reading on the research topics.

During my time I was often given tasks to do, then left alone to complete them e.g. creating an experiment or recruiting/testing participants. However there were regular check up's with my bosses to check that everything was going allright and the research was on track.

The skills I learnt will be very useful for my final year of university when I am creating and running and analysing my own research project. These skills will also be extremly useful if I go on to do a research based job after university. Presenting a poster at the BPS conference also greatly improved my confidence and presentation skills, these skills will be useful to me in any job I could chose to do. Working with participants on a daily basis also helped to improve my communication skills.

While I was working alone on my projects, I shared an office with other placement students working for other people at the university. This meant that I was never alone for long and there was always someone to chat to either about work or other things.

I only got this job by sheer luck after I had to quit another placement which I disliked very much. Both my boses were very helpful in finding me work to do, and while it was not organised from the start I am very happy and grateful at the way they organised my time working for them.

They invested time in helping me develop my writting skills, my programming skills (of programs such as e-prime), my analysis skills (in programs such as excell and e-prime) and helping me with my presentation skills. I feel like they tried thier hardest to make my placement useful to me in my future career.

I am leaving this at half only because I am unsure of what I would want to do once I have finished my final year at the moment. Prospects within the organisation would depend on if they had any openings at the time I finish my final year.

I got really well with all the other placement students. I even met placement students from previous years, who I am still very good friends with today and probably will be for a long time.

Doing an unpaid voluntary placement was a struggle in comparison to previous years of uni, but due to the flexible nature of my work it meant I could have a part time ob to help support myself. Within the Birmingham area there is a wide range of pricing on houses/flats/student accomodation depending on what you can afford. The cost of living was allright, and much cheaper than places like London.

With broadstreet being just round the corner there is a lot of nightlife available. There is a 'gay' district too for more alternative clubs in a seperate area of Birmingham, and there are also a couple of rock clubs available. So there is a lot of choice when it comes to nightlife. There is also 3 cinemas within the city centre and a multitude of places to eat.

At the university itself there is a variety of social clubs that it would of been possible to get involved with