Honorary Research Assistant Review

It is something that will look great on your CV and is a necessary stepping stone if you are interested in a career in clinical Psychology. It also gives you a good insight into the world of Cambridge and allows you to get your foot in the door if you were considering applying for a masters or PHD there. However the job is incredibly hard work. You have to carry weighty bags on equipment on a whole manor of public transport, be prepared to work evenings and weekends and sometimes up to 16 hour days for no pay. As a result it can be quite lonely and difficult to meet people as you are only part of a small team of graduates (perhaps one or two) unlike any business placement scheme. And then there's the fact that you don't get paid. Although on the plus side you do get all your expenses paid for and a £4000 bursary, which makes the whole thing possible. You do still need a loan though as you do not see a lot of the money until you leave. Better than a lot of research posts though as many are completely voluntary.

They did thank us a lot and arranged a couple of dinner evenings. However I still don't really think they understood the fact that we had lives outside of work. This was evident from the pressure that they put on us to work weekends and other long and unsociable hours. I often felt like they would get us to do whatever it took to get the job done, regardless of our personal situation and tended to view their own time as more valuable than ours. All in all quite tough task masters.

The professor herself was good and was always the one to suggest dinner evenings and treated us to dinner out a couple of times. However we didn't really see her on a regular basis. Daily work was done with the supervisors but although they could be very nice and said all the right things with regard to support I feel like we could of done with a bit more understanding and consideration at times. I think they were just under pressure to might deadlines themselves and this could sometimes rub off onto us.

It was common place for it either to be one extreme or the other.

There was a lot of responsibility involved. Me ad one other placement student would either test participants together if we were going to a participants house or completely alone. We were solely responsible for the care of the child during this time, with some parents choosing to leave the premises altogether. We also worked in the hospital so had a level of professionalism to maintain.

Since talking to other placement students who worked as research assistants I realise I didn't gain as much as I could of. Unfortunately a lot of the skills were too specific to be transferred back to my degree studies. Although it did give me a good level of general understanding and a very good work ethic. I figured if I can do a job I don't really like, for no money, in an area where I'm pretty isolated I think I can do anything!

We tended to have plenty of opportunities to have a good chat and this was good when everyone was in in a good mood but if one person was in a bad mood it could bring the whole office crashing down into misery.

In some respects it was very organised, lot of check lists and teaching manuals etc. However I found the supervisors themselves weren't always the most organised and could be a bit nonsensical which could throw work into complete disarray. We also spent a lot of time sorting out errors in previous data which hints at a lack of organisation somewhere along the line.

They had to train us up in a range of psychological testing techniques in order for us to do the visits alone and in this respect they put in an excess of time. We were also allowed to attend our professors lecture series, guest lectures and journal clubs which invested in our personal development.

I realised I am not interested in research but I am not sure whether this is just me or a reflection on the organisation.

This was a real problem. There ended up being only two of us and fortunately I got on with the other girl great and she just happened to know a few other people in Cambridge so I got to meet a few people through her. But being that we had such inconsistent free time it was difficult to meet anyone as couldn't join a club or anything.

Cambridge is not a cheap place but it is quite student friendly so there are alot of student deals about.

Not that I got to go a lot but there seemed to be a good selection of bars and pubs but not much in the way of big clubs.

As I said we didn't really have a lot of consistent free time so was difficult to join any clubs and nothing was suggested to us by our employers.