Year in Industry Student Review

Overall I've had a very enjoyable year where I've developed not just professionally (although a fairly technical placement in a well-rounded department of a multinational business is always good) but as a person - through living away from home, being responsible for my own finances, and making friends in a completely new city and setting.

It's been an ongoing process and I think it's not easy at the start of a placement where a lot of knowledge will build up over the year. However, now I feel that I can offer opinions on issues affecting the business and they will be seen as useful and valuable. My coding and technical/number crunching skills have also secured me small tasks and jobs from members of the team which has made me feel more valued and useful!

Generally a good level of support - it could be difficult at times since I wanted to focus on technical problems whereas my managers were keen to look at projects from a broader business/financial perspective. However there are good resources at EDF for learning and self-development so I could teach myself about technical aspects when I had the time.

This could vary - there were times when I worked 12 hour days to try and meet deadlines or fix code issues as quickly as possible. The majority of the time has been a good balance however - I usually have plenty to do and quite varied work as well.

As I was working in a small team I was accountable for certain areas of the project. I think the timescale was quite a steep curve (this was out of my managers' control as fundamental issues were identified in the code soon after I started working on the project) but now that I am more comfortable, I (usually!) enjoy being able to develop a new piece of functionality, change it to reflect feedback, and test that it works.

I think my coding skills are likely to be much more in-depth than my contemporaries as I start my physics degree. I'll also have some good specialist knowledge of nuclear physics (although this will only be a small portion of what I study). However I think my time management skills, seeing the inner workings of several projects and being accountable for some quite complex areas of code will be valuable for succeeding in my studies and improving my prospects upon graduation.

The team were generally very friendly and I made some good friends in and out of my department - since EDF takes on a lot of placement students, the social scene in and out of work was excellent.

Overall I enjoyed my placement, but it could be chaotic at times (in fairness, some of the factors were out of my managers' control). Firstly the coding project was handed over with some fundamental problems which required a completely new approach and so it took up much more of my time (and was more demanding) than I or my managers had expected. Also one point which would have improved the placement - having secondments in other departments should be an easier process which is advertised to the student earlier on in their year. Whilst some of the more technical departments seem a bit nervous of taking on pre-university students due to the demanding work, I still think it would help if they could identify appropriate work early on so that people can have a taste of very different areas of the business during their placement.

I think being accountable for some quite complex work has really pushed me as a person (in a good way!) and so I see that as a very valuable form of indirect investment. My department head organised for me to work on a power station for two weeks. This was a really useful investment - the work itself was fairly simple but it really helped me to understand the culture on station and how this can create problems with a central technical division being seen as an "ivory tower"!

There seems to be a good level of summer placements and graduate scheme places although the company appear to be cutting back on these. Personally I would like to gain experience of different areas of the business before deciding to return for a career, but I have certainly enjoyed my year and I think the energy industry is going to face some really interesting problems and developments over the next decade or so. I have applied for sponsorship which, if successful, would see me gain summer placement work throughout my degree. However I have yet to hear back on this at the time of writing.

Really friendly big group of placement students - having a mix of pre-uni and mid-degree students meant that the older ones organised a lot of socials. I've made good friends with a lot of people this year and hope we stay in touch despite where we may be heading (from Cambridge to Durham to Manchester to Southhampton to Denmark!). With the colleagues, due to a lot of them being older there wasn't a big social scene (many of them didn't live in Gloucester anyway). However this is understandable (I'm not suggesting that people raising families should be forced to head out in central Gloucester every weekend!), and there were a few enjoyable social events such as team dinners over the year. On top of this, the good social scene with the placement students meant that this wasn't a problem.

Generally cheap - I've been able to break even over the year on a £12k salary. Rent levels have been quite good considering I live in central Gloucester and am therefore close to the shops, train station, and city centre nightlife.

Good mix of pubs and clubs around Gloucester/Cheltenham - if we wanted to go out, we could basically (let's assume Rate My Placement would rather not have an in-depth review of every venue in Gloucestershire!).

As above - lots of student social events and some activities organised by the business (sporting socials etc.) With Gloucester itself, I've taken conversational French classes and been involved in open mic nights over the year - inevtiably you do have to search for these sorts of things. Generally speaking however, for a small-ish city I've certainly not been bored over the year outside of work!