Associate Study Manager Review

At the beginning I did find it slightly boring, but there was a lot of training involved in order to enable me to start having more of a say. Once my manager began to give me more responsibilities I really started to enjoy the job, although it might not be something I wish to peruse in the future.

I felt extremely valued. I have to say, that has been one of the best things about this placement, my colleagues - especially my manager - have given me a lot of support and they have encouraged me to contribute more and more. I now really do feel part of the team, and not just a student burdening them with more work. I feel I have genuinely contributed to the study, and I have my colleague’s enthusiasm and engagement to thank for that.

I was given an enormous amount of support. In anything I have done here I have at no point felt like I was out of my depth, and that was because of the continuing support of my manager, who would always make time to discuss things with me and help me learn. In addition, my manager supported me with any university work, or learning opportunities that arose not immediately related to this job, allowing me to grow, keep on top of university work, and develop my understanding of the pharmaceutical business as whole.

At the start of the placement, I was busy but mainly completing mandatory training modules, which could be quite laborious. As I progress through my placement I gained more responsibilities and now I feel I am busy daily, contributing to the team. As it is a study management placement, the amount of work to be done varies, but I feel comfortable with the amount of work I have on a daily bases and at no point feel 'swamped'.

I have been given increasing amounts of responsibility, and have felt valued because of this. There a significant process' that I oversee, and manage, as well as being allowed to add to the team in terms of creating new ways of tracking and managing the study. This was a huge bonus for me, the fact that I do feel my opinion is treated with equal respect as anyone else in the team, and so when I had an idea or opinion on something, I felt comfortable expressing it.

This placement, although I didn't think it would, will help me enormously when I return to University. I have developed more as a person in this past year than I ever have. I feel a lot more confident in my own abilities, my communication (Written and oral) have improved significantly which will help when presenting at university. In addition I now feel comfortable with my own ideas and views on certain biological issues, and I am looking forward to going back to full time education and challenging or adding to current views held by the lecturers and others.

I would say the majority of the time the general atmosphere was professional, but not exclusively. It was quite relaxed, but not overly relaxed, I do not have much experience in office work, but I would say this would be the 'norm'. However I found it a nice environment to work in, fun and excitement may have seemed a little inappropriate given the line of work.

The organisation was brilliant. I was given lots of opportunities to explore GSK as a whole company and find out more about different areas of the business, as well as visiting different sites - in this respect, it was brilliant. The only thing I would say is that the grad schemes offered by GSK don't seem very inclusive, and I found the staff in charge of this particular area to be either willingly unhelpful to the placement students, or to just completely lack any knowledge around the Grad scheme which they are in charge of. For example, my manager met with them in order to clarify a few things for me, and they could not answer the majority of the questions, this was frustrating and in the end I did not apply for the Grad scheme.

There was an enormous amount of online training that we completed, as well as interactive classes, and 'lunchtime learning' in which a colleague would talk through an area of the business they know well, or an exciting new way of treating a certain disease.

I am not entirely sure if this area of pharmaceuticals interests me, or whether the whole industry isn't for me at this point, it is something I will think about over the course of next year. However, there is an area of the business that interests me and it was incredibly easy to organise a meeting with a GSK colleague from that area of the business, which was helpful.

To be honest - no. It's not that we don't get along, the majority of us do, but the living costs of London, and usually the costs of socialising, makes it difficult. That’s not to say we don't get together and socialise, just not as often as I may have thought.

Quite expensive, not as bad as inner-city London, but still quite steep. For example the house we lived in was definitely a 'student house': very bad condition, lots of things wrong with it. But the rent was pretty high and for someone from the midlands, who goes to University up North, it seemed ridiculous. For the same amount of money in Newcastle, I would have an extremely nice place to live.

Pretty much non-existent apart from one club, which was awful. But we were close enough to London central that we could travel in for the night life there.

GSK has a lot of charities set up, and also works with a lot of schools etc. and we all had the opportunity to get involved in these areas. I did not get involved, but I do wish I had taken the chance to help out in those areas.