Industrial Placement Student Review

The only downside of this placement was that it was in Stevenage. Everything else was brilliant!

After about 5months and as i grew in confidence, my colleagues began to value my input in meetings and my advice on the protocol I was creating

Excellent, couldn't ask for more. Even when my supurvisor was away he would always make sure someone was around to give me a hand or some guidence if I needed it.

Generally I had quite a good balance between lab work and office work. Ocasionally I would have a week where I had nothing on and sometimes i was extremly busy but thats what happends when you work in research.

Again after about 5 months I was given a lot of responsibility, being trusted with lots of experiments and asked to give presentations at section meetings. I Think the resposibility came with the confidence.

Everything I learned here will help. From lab work to statistics to presentation skills, I can't imagine not using the skills I learnt here later in life.

Very relaxed. The office was open plan so there wre no cubuicles and no one had a set desk. It meant that you could easily wonder over to some and just have a chat. There also was no dress code here as well, basically wear what you want within reason so jeans and a t-shirt are more than fine.

Considering nothing ever goes to plan in research, my placement was very well laid out for me. My supurvisor gave me a clear plan at the start and we've managed to stick to it all the way through. there's also a certain amount of flexibility so i wasn't just stuck doing the same thing for a year.

I feel quite a lot. When I started I was expected to know nothing and so for the first few months I needed constant supurvision. Also we had certain workshops organised for us at the expense of the company for things like scientific writing and presentational skills.

Ideally would like to work at GSK as a full time employee in the future.

Quite good. GSK employs the most students out of the pharmaceutical companies I think. On site there were about 140 other students so the social life was fairly decent

Quite decent. In stevenage everything was a reasonable price (in terms of rent, groceries, eating out etc) but as theres not much to do here we would often have to go into London or Cambridge for a night out and this could get fairly expensive.

In Stevenage it was awful! But seeing as Cambridge and London are a 40 minute drive away, for birthdays and special occasions we would hire a coach or minibus to drive us there and pick us up.

Not really. They have an on site fitness centre where theres a squash and 5-a-side football league. apart from that theres a few sports teams in Stevenage but only for the major sports. Not sure about other activities but theres not much in Stevenage.