• Question: What did you all do for work experience? If you did do it?

    Asked by 624eneq36 to Oliver, Lesley, Leah, Hannah, Graeme, Aleks on 6 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Lesley Colquhoun

      Lesley Colquhoun answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      I didn’t do any related work experience until i was in 3rd year of Uni where i used the IAESTE program to work in Budapest, Hungary for 2 months at an engineering firm.

      The IAESTE program allows students from all over the world to move into summer placements for a few months so i spent my summer learning MATLAB and Simulink and socialising with fellow technical students from everywhere!

      What i learned from this was that i never wanted to work with MATLAB or Simulink again haha! but the experience and meeting with other techncial students was amazing.

    • Photo: Graeme Burt

      Graeme Burt answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      I had a summer job working as an assistant for an electrician. My actual school placement was terrible, they sent me on a training scheme to do production line soldering which I alreday knew how to do. I advise finding your own placements

    • Photo: Leah Morgan

      Leah Morgan answered on 7 Mar 2019:

      I visited a German university on my work placement and spent time with the researchers there. It was the first time I realised I could go into physics if I wanted to! I never did any work experience at uni though, that was a big mistake!

    • Photo: Hannah Griffin

      Hannah Griffin answered on 7 Mar 2019:

      When I was at school I wanted to be a primary teacher so when I was in year 10 I spent a week with a local primary. I loved it and made me determined to be a teacher… but it turned out I loved doing my A Level IT project more so I changed my mind at the last minute in year 13!

      I did do a sandwich year during my degree though and I found that very helpful. Gave me a whole year to practise what I’d learned in the first 2 years at uni. If I hadn’t done this I don’t think I would have done as well in my final year at uni as I did. Summer placements, sometimes called vacation student schemes or internships are also valuable experience.

      Where I work, STFC, provide lots of work experience for years 10-13 including over the summer so you might want to check that out…. (you might even end up in my group if you’re interested in software!)

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