Academic Research Intern: Cataloguing and Curation of University Geology Collections Review

My main role is cataloguing and curating specimens. Day-to-day work includes adding details to Excel spreadsheets using index cards, old teaching materials and specimen labels, preparing informative new labels for specimens, re-boxing minerals and rocks, and undertaking some additional online research and in University Special Collections as appropriate for individual specimens where information is incomplete.

Yes, I have been given much responsibility, however we balance the workload with each other in the team, which was an appropriate amount of workload to me in overall.

I have developed my skills in systematic data gathering and recording, mainly through Microsoft Excel, as well as online and library research for geological history of the rocks and minerals. This has deepened my knowledge in geology and enabled me to gain experience working part of the history and heritage of the university. This internship has also strengthened my teamwork and communication when working as part of a small team.

I had sufficient support during the internship, where my supervisor often talked to us about the work we worked on and gave a lot of guidance and resources, as well as inviting some professionals in the related area to meet and talk with us, and teach us something new.

As it took place in my university department, it was quite flexible for working hours, which allowed a great extent of work-life balance and did not affect my study a lot. I could feel that it was a very warm, welcoming and friendly environment in general, as we are a small team of 2-4 people, with very kind supervisor and colleagues.

I would give 8 out of 10, as everything was perfect, which I would love to continue this internship and keep learning. The only thing is the salary was quite low and sometimes might be a bit of boring for repetitive work.

Yes