For those of you lucky enough to still be in your college days, today is the day you get your A-Level results. Hopefully you've all done well, so congratulations to you all! It seems a long, long time ago now since I got mine but to be honest with you, this is probably the worst lot out of the way!
I thought today that I would give you a few more pointers to what I have been doing as a chemical engineering intern for the past few weeks. To start, I just returned from a holiday which was fantastic but it doesn't take long for several hundred emails to accumulate in your inbox! This meant that my week back has been a busy one, but productive nonetheless.
This week I have had to write a technical note for some modelling that I have been doing recently. This was somewhat strange as whilst at university you read quite a lot of research papers so understand that professional documents are written in a concise, yet scientific manner. The problem is though that university doesn't really give you any real guidelines on doing them yourself, that isn't to say that you don't get practice at writing reports, but there is no subject that tells you the necessities! So this is a perfect example of an internship supplementing, and improving the worth of a degree.
I hope next time to tell you about some of the benefits and fun things you get to look forward to being both a chemical engineering student and professional. Until then..............celebrate the results and have one for me!
Last time I told you about some of the initial experiences faced when entering the ethos of university life. I thought today I would take a moment to explain to you some of the things I have experienced in my first few weeks of my industrial internship.
I arrived on my first day for an induction in central London where we went to a famous landmark office and met all of the others local interns in the company. This to start off with was a great opportunity just to meet lots of new people and begin to network with company employees (you'll find out one day that the idea of networking is both an important and exciting one!). This was a long and tiring day consisting mostly of cramming your head full of facts, figures, protocols, etc. etc. and you think when is this all going to end!?! But the pressure was soon relieved after 5 with a trip to a local establishment for a fine barbecue and
drink session courtesy of the company (also got to watch Wimbledon on a giant plasma screen in an open courtyard, fantastic!!!).
The following day was my first on site, and oh my, what a difference. Suddenly you get taught that what you do is an actual job with real responsibility and accountability. I mean, I had myself down for a pen-pusher for the year! This meant that I had to get use to going and sitting in on important meetings and teleconferences, amongst other business related functions.
By the end of my first week I was working on fair sized project and was briefed on a project that I would be joining in a matter a weeks, a hugely budgeted one which has a lot of scope in the press! I mean, me doing a proper engineering job, I haven't even been here 5 days yet!!!
So you see, that although university owes a life of work hard to play hard, a job brings you opportunities to home in on and enhance your practical and technical abilities. It doesn't matter if you're just an intern, you are an equal member of a company all striving towards the same goal. I personally think that an industrial placement whether it be a year long or 3 months, is a definite thing to consider when reading chemical engineering.
