Industrial Placement Student Review

The resposibility given to me on my project made working an extremely rewarding experience. Everyone was up for a laugh as well so work began to merge with socialising. We went down the pub with our supervisors outside of work.

Again, the responsibility given to me meant that my work was directly useful to the department. I had to give presentations at weekly group meetings about my progress as much as my long term collegues.

There never seemed to be an inappropriate time to ask questions with both my supervisor or my manager. They actively incouraged us to ask questions because in the long run it could prevent us destroying a £10000 piece of equipment and help us learn faster.

Sometimes the workload became stressful. In particular some of the lab protocols would mean I had to work later than I had planned but the benefit of learning new techniques far outweighs an extra hour on your day. I am personally planning to go into scientific research for a career so being paid a wage for a year to gain all the experience that I did seemed like a very fair deal. That said there were still days that were so relaxed that a coffee break would extend across the hour mark.

The project I was given was to investigate whether a new idea could work in practice. The idea, in theory, would speed up the processes by which the department discovered new potential therapeutics. This made me feel like I was given plenty of responsibility and I initially felt overly responsible for the project.

Now I am experienced in many techniques used for molecular biology which means getting a PhD place or a job will be much easier. Employing me within this field would essentially save the employer time and money because, compared to someone without my experience, I am already partly trained.

There was always someone to chat to and it was always fairly easy to concentrate when needed. We could listen to music and people brought cakes in almost every week.

The process was very straight forward: apply, get called for interview, get accepted, go to several open days to learn how life at GSK will work. They even had estate agents on site to help us find accomodation with other placement students.

I was allowed to use as many consumables as I needed in the lab so I was only restricted by which direction my project took me.

Officially, getting a placement with the company does not directly lead to employment later on but if there is a choice between someone that has already worked within GSK for a year and someone that hasn't I think it would always swing in the formers favour.

The students all went out every weekend to pubs and clubs and there were many pub trips organised with my colleages.

We were based in Stevenage which is a major town on the London communter belt so rent prices were pretty high but general costs of living were no different to anywhere else in the south east.

The clubs were all cramed in to a (p)leasure park next to the train station. The park contained only the worst chain clubs that are possible. On the up side there were a few good bars/clubs in Stevenage old town and plenty of good pubs dotted around the town.

London and Cambridge were both a short train ride away so the possibilities of doing things were endless. Stevenage itself boasted shopping centres, a swimming pool, loads of chain restaurants and a minimalist clock tower erected in 1958.