View all news

As week six draws to a close it is time for another long-awaited blog, and this is the penultimate one! Which is scary to think that I only have one more week left as an intern. I am not sure what I’ll do with myself on Fridays since I won’t be writing these anymore.

I read an article this week from the ‘Tab’ (a student news website) all about how awful internships are and how they are a waste of time. It made me laugh since clearly, they didn’t read this blog before writing it! As I’m sure you are all aware by now, I think the complete opposite; this internship has been such an exciting thing to do and has taught me a lot. I definitely don’t think it’s been a waste of time; in fact, it’s been a great way to spend seven weeks. Perhaps I’ve just been super lucky working for such a great company 😊.

Now time to get into what I did this week. As before, I just worked on my existing tasks and mostly my Competitor’s Review. I wrote over 2,000 words in one day; if only I was that productive at the library for my uni work. I’ve finally finished writing the main bulk of it, which means the rest of today and next week is going to be intense editing to make it an actual review and not lots of separate ideas in one document.

I have spent a lot of time looking at other biopesticide companies, which has been very interesting to see how they tackle marketing and making their product portfolio known to a wider audience. I then compared what I found to other companies (including AlphaBio), discussing what I think is effective and what if anything we could implement. I’ve never done anything like this so I have definitely been learning as I go, which has meant my brain feels at capacity at some points! But its all helpful and should hopefully mean I produce a comprehensive report. No pressure then!

I also undertook a few smaller tasks, including one from Paula from the regulatory team. I had to go on Xero, find invoices and categorise what they were for and what stage of the regulatory process they were for. This also meant I got to look at the infamous ‘RMD’, a spreadsheet the puts any of mine to shame, with colour coding, hyper links and you could even filter the columns. I never would have thought that spreadsheets would crop up so much in these blogs.

Hopefully all the spreadsheet talk hasn’t become boring, but they seem to be a part of a lot of the work I’ve done, something I’m not complaining about. When it comes to my dissertation next year, my data spreadsheets will be the best ever thanks to all this new-found Excel knowledge.  

Finally, I also had a meeting on Wednesday that included chocolate cake, perhaps the best meeting yet? Midweek chocolate cake is always a win and makes any meeting 10x better. That’s about it for this week, you’ll have to come back next week for the final blog!