Industrial placement student Review

This placement was really enjoyable as I have learned a lot from the tasks I had to do and from the people around me. There always is an expert in the field you are interested in you can reach out to. I would spend a bit more time here if I could.

I am grateful to my colleagues who after a few months had a lot of confidence in my work and let me work as equal with them, while giving me the help I needed. It always takes a bit of time to earn the trust of a colleague but it really feels good when it is done and colleagues allow you to work with them and not for them.

My supervisor has been dedicated to help me all along my placement, training me in the beginning, giving me full support in the next months, and giving me direction to experts in a specific field if I needed more insight to a specific issue. But not only my supervisor supported me. Most of the department was ready to help anytime I asked for it.

Some days may have been relatively boring when science kept on not working and things would go slow, but that is just a small bit of the placement as even a day where nothing works out is stimulating. In a general manner, I was quite busy and was sometimes had to challenge my organisation skills, but I still had time to go to interesting lectures in the less busy times.

The responsibility given to me raised along the time of the year. As I had to train and earn the trust of my colleagues in the first months, responsibility was limited and my impact on the project I was assigned to was quite small. But along this year, I have seen my responsibilities grow to a stimulating level where I could see the result of my work on the overall project, without being over pressured in any way by timelines or anything else.

I developed good communication in English and good process chemistry skills along this year, that will help in my studies. The consistency, resiliency and the ability to go deep into a specific science are some of the qualities a process chemist must have, and these can be applied in many other ways and fields so I would be able to express these in the future. However, working in process chemistry is quite repetitive in term of technical skills, I would just have hoped to gain more versatility in my chemistry skills by working on differents projects at once for example. This also would have made the job sometimes less repetitive.

My office was quite calm. It was not super fun everyday, but I really enjoyed my time with the people around me who were all nice and had time to discuss about anything. My lab colleagues were very helpful too and made my time in the lab enjoyable. Good work atmosphere in a general manner.

GSK is used to host a lot of Industrial Placement Student every year so it was pretty well organised. Before, during and after my arrival, I was always accompanied and given the information I needed. My supervisor for the year changed last minute but that did not cause any trouble to the job I was assigned to. My only concern is that I got assigned to a job I did not applied to in first instance, which was in the process chemistry department instead of the medicinal chemistry department. This could be a big minus for a lot of student so I take this survey as an occasion to raise it. Fortunately for GSK and for me, I really enjoyed it too despite not having been informed before my arrival. Regarding the overall year, organisation was good as I was always assigned to a project with no gaps, and always helped by colleagues.

Trainings in GSK are a huge part of the overall work, sometimes a bit too much. But I have to admit that everything was set up to provide me the skills I needed for my job and that I will be able to use in the future, so I am truly grateful for this.

There is a restructuration in my department so it is not the best time to enter the organisation as a permanent employee in my opinion, but PhD offers and contractor offers are quite interesting and deserve my consideration.

There was a lot of events around science mostly, so it is really enjoyable for me as I am quite passionate about that, but I felt a lack of simply social events to meet more people. placement students organised a few events to meet other placement students but it was restricted to student and limited the possibilities to socialize with the rest of the organisation.

My placement was in Stevenage, nearby London, so the rent was quite expensive but was not worth it compared to what is available to do in Stevenage. This town has no community, no town center you want to spend some time in... And night life is very limited apart from a few nice restaurants. Fortunately, a lot of trains pass by Stevenage so you can go anywhere you want for not too much money: London, Brighton, Edinburgh, York, … That is really convenient for a foreigner like me and if you want to enjoy London life or discover this nice country.

Nightlife is not really the term I would use … Apart from a cinema, a few nice pubs and good restaurants, and a convenient train station to go to London or Hitchin, Stevenage is not really the place to be at night. Would not recommend the gloomy atmosphere of the leisure centre.

A few neighbourhood activities were proposed in my area but mostly aimed at kids so nothing for a placement student. Again, I would advise to head straight to London where you can find a new thing to do or explore each day. If you have a bike or a car, there are some nice places to visit out of town if you are ready to ride for a bit of time.