By Lucy Stanfield
Speak to any student of St Andrews and no doubt they will have some incredible once-in-a-lifetime summer plans. A dream internship, amazing charity work or hiking Mount Kilimanjaro. Just the usual. When the reality of full time work sets in long summers of university will be looked back upon fondly and with more than a little nostalgia, so we definitely should make the most of them now.
This summer I split my time between visiting friends in Europe and doing my first internship. Although I had dreamt of spending my days doing nothing of real importance, the impressive sound of the title “Junior Environmental Scientist” was too much to resist. Not to mention the need to fund my excessive Lizard visits. I would love to be able to claim that the job was fascinating and without a boring moment, but whilst it did interest me for the first few weeks, after eight weeks of nine hour days in an office in Manchester I was definitely ready to leave. Between the office gossip and slightly-too-friendly supervisors I decided one thing; at the age of nineteen summers are definitely better spent well away from a desk.
For the sake of my sanity, I managed to squeeze in a visit to Estonia with four other friends before returning to St Andrews. The week was filled with all the stuff that summers should be; bonfires on the beach, sleeping under the stars, driving around aimlessly with your friends with an excess of alcohol and strange Estonian men.