Risk Intern Review

To a certain extent I imagine my lack of enjoyment was due to the area of the business in which I was working. That said, there wasn't a lot of work to be done, and what work needed to be done was usually less than enjoyable filing work or similarly menial time spent on Excel. There were enjoyable moments, but I wouldn't describe the experience as a whole as completely enjoyable.

I felt reasonably valued, although the overhanging realisation that I wasn't really doing anything productive meant that those comments couldn't really be taken to heart. Colleagues were always interested in my perspective on issues and life generally, My colleagues valued me, but I knew I wasn't truly valuable.

My colleagues were helpful, but my supervisor was never really in the office.

I can count days in which I had a productive task assigned to me that kept e occupied on one hand; there was busywork to be done but not the sort of stuff you sign up for. Whole days went by when nothing of substance happened, which was not very fun, although I did have opportunities to learn by reading online resources I could dig up myself.

Not very much responsibility.

Professional skills are always good to have, I imagine just the fact I successfully completed an internship will positively reflect on my future applications. That said, it probably has little to do with the skills developed on the job, and more to do with the single day of excel training we had. This will be helpful insofar as I can spin what I took away.

Because it wasn't the trading floor or an equivalent, things were fairly slow paced. That said, the atmosphere was positive. Everyone had an open desk, everyone was willing to chat with you, even people from other departments. The coffee machine was terrible, so we were always heading downstairs for a fresher cup, that's where half my interactions happened. Overall, the atmosphere was generally positive.

Things seemed out of sorts a lot of the time, HR wasn't always available to answer questions when asked and there weren't a lot of events. My colleagues seemed confused as to why I had been assigned to them, consensus seemed to be that I didn't need to be there, which wasn't particiularly productive.

The personal training programmes that were available didn't work, because my computer's operating system was way out of date. We had one Excel training day but, besides that, we were generally left on our own. There were speakers every so often, but none of them ever said anything ground breaking, generally just the same "try hard at uni, network with people, and keep moving forward." I didn't feel invested in.

There's a fairly high chance that a job comes out of it, it's a question of how mucoh faith you have in the organisation that determines whether those prospects look appealing. The graduate programme furthermore has some pretty unfortunate downsides, and doesn't feel like immediate integration into a team.

Just have to find the right people

London is extremely expensive.

London is extremely fun

There wasn't a lot