Industrial Placement Student Review

I have really enjoyed my year working at GSK. It has given me so much laboratory experience, and provided me with many skills that are necessary in the working world. I've enjoyed the year so much that I have decided I'll definitely be embarking on a PhD once I've finished my Bachelor's degree.

I feel like I really got to know my colleagues during the year placement, and felt like my work actually meant something to them. Once I was trained up, colleagues would trust me to help out with some of their work, and they really valued that I was there to help and take some of their heavy workload away.

My supervisor has been really helpful throughout this year, training me well and pushing my capabilities so that I really learned how to be independent in the lab and think for myself. My supervisor has always been available and supportive, which is useful when things go wrong! I have learned a lot from his expertise.

On an average day, I would spend a few hours in the lab, and a few hours working at my desk. I would always have work to be done, so I never really felt like I didn't have things to do. Some days I would be really busy in the lab, and others I'd have no lab work so it could become a bit laborious sitting at my desk all day.

I was given quite a lot of responsibility on my placement. A lot of the work I was doing was very important to the department I was working in, which was quite worrying to begin with as I didn't want to mess it up! But you quickly learn that even when things go wrong there's always a way to resurrect it or start again and nobody minds too much.

I learned a lot of skills which will be useful for my degree, because my placement was lab-based. My degree is in Biochemistry and we don't get a lot of lab experience at university, so this placement year has given me invaluable experience of being in the lab. It has also improved my problem solving, teamwork & communication skills.

Obviously people are quite busy working in the office, so it's never going to be all fun and games, but my office was very friendly. The general atmosphere was quite relaxed, with some chatting and mostly working. I could tell my office was quite hardworking as a lot of people didn't take a lunch break and worked through lunch!

I think the year placement was set up very well for me. Some people complained that they hadn't started their projects till quite late in the year so they felt stressed at the end trying to write up their report, but in my case my supervisor had already planned out the main bulk of my project, so I was able to get stuck in straight away. This meant I had a lot of free time towards the end to work on my report.

I was trained to a very high standard concerning laboratory technique at GSK. A lot of time (& money!) was invested into my training - particularly by my supervisor who spent a lot of his time helping me to learn lab skills. I am very grateful for this opportunity - I feel like GSK really wanted us to do well, not just for their benefit.

For other students in different departments, future employment prospects are really good because of graduate schemes which exist. However because I want to go into medicines research, I still need to achieve a PhD before I can be employed. Unfortunately there aren't any graduate positions at GSK for my kind of research area.

There are over a hundred placement students just at GSK Stevenage, and hundreds at other sites too, so obviously there was a good social scene. On a smaller level, departmental meetups in the pub after work happened quite often. On a larger scale, there was a group of students (IP UNITE) who organised events for all IP students, including boat parties and Christmas parties.

I go to university in London, so I am used to quite high prices. Coming to Stevenage was therefore a pleasant shock to the system, with much lower living costs. I paid around £400 a month for accommodation. Socialising wasn't super cheap, but again cheaper than London, and finding the right bars and pubs with weekday offers proved beneficial.

In Stevenage itself, there are only two bar/clubs, and quite a few pubs. However, being only 20 minutes away from London, you have all of that nightlife pretty much on your doorstep, so I can't complain. The only problem is that the cost for weekly travel to the capital quickly builds up when planning nights out there!

There were quite a few opportunities to join sporting clubs, however I did not partake in these.