Summer Intern (Applied Sciences) Review

The majority of the day involved working on our internal projects which involved a lot of scientific research, design engineering and some lab testing. As well as this we had a lot of corporate learning meetings to work on skills such as presenting, and often networking calls to discuss projects and other work with people in the office.

Yes, as we were assigned our own projects in pairs and we worked quite independently on this project as it was completely ours to decide what path to take it down and what we wanted to actually focus on. The project was an internal one rather than a client one however so it is less important to the company.

I have developed my scientific research and testing skills as well as learnt a lot of new engineering skills that have not previously been my background such as CAD. The majority of the projects worked on are very interdisciplinary and require a lot of learning of new disciplines to understand the different elements of a project. I have also improved my presentation skills over the course of the placement.

I had quite a lot of support from the two supervisors I had working on my project as well as my line manager, as we had frequent calls to discuss how the work was going and to let me ask questions. As well as this we also had a 'buddy' I saw frequently who was a relatively recent graduate and that was great to have someone to talk to more informally.

The atmosphere was generally good and most people in the office are very willing to chat and offer their expertise on anything we were working on. The atmosphere isn't too intense and we were able to chat to more senior people regularly without being very formal.

I enjoyed it overall although there were times when I was frustrated as my project wasn't always suited to my skills and I felt like I couldn't really contribute. The environment and the people were very nice however so it was enjoyable.

Yes