Industrial Placement Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my placement year. All the colleagues and students I worked with were very friendly and helpful. It is a great opportunity to learn many new skills and meet lots of new people. What I enjoy most about the placement is the sense of community at GSK with everyone's ultimate goal of helping patients.

I felt very valued by my colleagues. I was often reminded by my supervisors how important and valuable my project work was and this inspired me to work hard to produce high quality work. I often had to present my work to other members of my team and was again praised and reminded that this work will really help them.

I was constantly given support by both of my supervisors throughout the year. Whether that be on a day to day basis answering my questions or having meetings to go through my work. I was also often given guidance and support from other members of the team which helped me greatly.

At the beginning of my placement I was less busy as a lot of my time involved training and reading around my project subject. However once I was comfortable in the lab I became more busy. Some weeks would involve big experiments where some days I would be very busy and work long hours. Whereas some weeks I would just be going to meetings and doing data analysis so I would be less busy.

After completing a number of training exercises I was given responsibility of working in the lab and as I gained more confidence I was allowed to do more and more lone working. My supervisors often made sure I was comfortable with this responsibility before going ahead with it. Throughout the year I was also given a number of tasks to complete.

Before starting my placement I only had very basic lab skills that I had learnt at university. From my year I have now had the opportunity to learn many new technics and I can bring these as well as my understanding of them to my final year of university. I have also improved on skills such as presentation skills and interpersonal skills.

The general atmosphere in my office was very positive. I worked in a large open office where everyone hot desks. This encourages everyone to constantly move around and sit with different people to create a collaborative atmosphere. This definitely worked as everyone in my office was always willing to give me advise or help if I asked.

In my department each student is given a project that we work on for the entire placement. Therefore each students project is organised by their supervisor. My supervisors were very well organised and always made a plan for my experiments. One of my supervisors also organised all the students training in my department.

The company invested a lot of time into training me. They offered to pay for me to attend a training course in London that I asked to go to. They were always encouraging me to attend talks/seminars that I wanted to go to. They were also very encouraging and helpful with my university work that I was doing along side my work.

The company run the Future Leadership Program which includes many different roles for graduates. The company also offer support and help to apply for these roles therefore we are definitely encouraged to reapply to work for the company.

There were many students in my department therefore we often organised group activities whether that be during work hours or in the evening. There were also socials organised by the staff in my department where large groups of us would get together in the evening.

I was living at home with my family during my placement year and commuted to work by car. However I understand the cost of living is quite low for shared housing. The cost of socialising is also very low compared with London prices.

In Stevenage there is not a great nightlife. There are a few local bars and pubs and one bar that turns into a club. However the train from Stevenage runs straight to Kings Cross so it is very easy to get to and from London.

There were quite a few opportunities to get involved with charity events and social activities throughout the year. Each department participates on an Orange Day where we go out into the local community and help out for a day. We had the opportunity to attend the Big Bang fair and be sponsored to take part in a Tough Mudder.