Synthetic Organic Chemist Review

The placement taught me many organic chemistry practical work which will be invaluable when I do my masters next year. It was enjoyable working as part of a member of GSK and the experience I gained from this will really help me when I think about career options for the future.

Part of why my experience was so great was because my team members were all friendly and enjoyable people to work with. We would have many non-work related events where we would have dinner after work which was nice because not every team does that and it makes the students feel like part of a family. I can only hope the next people I work with are as nice and fun as my current ones.

During the first few months, I would constantly require help from all the supervisors in my lab and they would answer all of my questions. Being in the lab, the chemicals we work with are very dangerous so they would have to always look over me, but eventually I became a competent chemist that would just get on with experiments.

I was busy nearly every single day of the year. With chemistry there's always more reactions to do and more compounds to make so there was never a time when I had a whole day of free time. That being said, I wouldn't always be in the lab as there were constantly external and internal chemistry lectures that I was encouraged to go to.

From the get-go, I had to make compounds that would be tested to see if it was potent enough and had good solubility. That continued for the rest of the year, my supervisors would assign compounds to me and I would make them. However, I never had the chance to decide on the compounds to make because my supervisors always knew what they wanted.

It is likely I will stay in chemistry after university so I believe this year of working in an industrial lab will be invaluable experience that I will likely never get again. My masters project is also on organic chemistry so I will constantly be in the lab and I feel ready for it because I spent the whole year in a lab doing organic chemistry.

We could always play any sort of music in the lab which was great and I even discovered a few good bands that my supervisor listened to. I feel like doing chemistry with music enhances my productivity as I'm usually in a good mood when listening to artists that I like. The supervisors are very laid-back and make lots of jokes with us which dissolves the supervisor-supervisee barrier. Also having other students in the lab was vital in making the lab life fun.

The placement was very well organised and I have no complaints.

The supervisors pretty much spent their first three months just training the students non-stop. They really developed my lab skills to the extent where they didn't have to look over my back and see how I was doing.

I would be great to work for GSK but there is currently a recruitment freeze for organic chemist graduates, so unless I get a phD or a postdoc it seems that I probably won't work for them in the future.

Having about 140 students, 40 of them being chemists, was good fun because it meant there was always something to do on the weekend or after work.

The cost of living was good, living in London for the past few years has made me realise that Stevenage is a affordable place to live in. It has a couple bars, pubs and one club which made socialising easy and it's only 20 minutes away from London.

There is one nightclub in Stevenage which has happy hour from 5-10 so we would always go there after work on Friday to destroy our livers.

I joined gymnastics which I attended every Wednesday and I have friends who did Karate, Krav Mage and Judo so there was quite a lot of activities to do outside of work. Being an avid rock climber, the nearest climbing wall was in London which made it hard to climb.