Got an internship in February. That internship fell through a couple of months later and I haven’t mentioned it to someone who worked a Documobi who then offered me an internship on the spot. I was just a software development intern. It was with a company called Documobi based in Harrogate. They do technology, specifically web development and app development. I helped build some of their infrastructure. I also built their website for them when they ended a new website and considering that I hadn’t had any programming experience outside of my degree. I was really proud of the fact that it not only looked good, but worked well, and I managed to put in some modifications that they came back and went “actually this looks really good” with a language that I’d only been using for 8 weeks.

Going into the internship I thought that I could happily program for the rest of my life. Although I really enjoyed it, it made me realise I don’t particularly want to do programming. I enjoy getting hands-on, whether that’s with research in a lab or developing technology, both hardware and software. Just narrowing that down made me think about the kind of jobs I wanted to get into and has now made me consider a PhD more than I originally did, so I’m now looking into that.

I’d looked for internships across the country. I went to careers fairs, chatting to a lot of different companies. There are a lot of rejections involved no matter how good you are. I kept telling myself “I’m competing against the country so I’m not surprised I didn’t get an internship” It was just a case of keep tweaking the CV to suit the jobs and just try and learn from each experience. Once you’ve got that experience of how to apply to an internship you’ll definitely be ready to kind of target the employer with what they want and be able to pick out your skills for that set.