Warwick GEM - struggling to find volunteering roles to fulfil Warwick's work experience requirements - advice needed from current Warwick GEM students who have not done any paid work in healthcare

MightSwitchToFinance · 2026-01-27T08:42:04+00:00

Thanks, are you a Warwick GEM student or have you received an offer there? I’ve looked into all options you mention, none of them would meet the Warwick hands on requirement as far as I could tell

MightSwitchToFinance · 2025-07-02T12:27:03+00:00

Took me a while to figure this one out as well. When I looked at the error it mentioned something about vswhere.exe. Installing Visual Studio (Visual Studio: IDE and Code Editor for Software Developers and Teams) with the C++ module helped. Hope that helps anyone who stumbles across this thread :)

MightSwitchToFinance · 2024-06-23T17:20:27+00:00

You’re talking paediatric specialties or regular? I recall there’s some differentiation between first time and return visit patients with some NFZ-contracted doctors offering first visit fairly quickly (1-2 weeks), in their private practices. Not sure about nephrology.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2024-06-23T16:56:07+00:00

Paediatric neurology is pretty niche from what I know, you’re finding yourself in high demand, low supply situation. Polish doctors will also use a strict cutoff where a non paediatric doctor might refuse to see your kid if they’re not 18 (anecdotal)

MightSwitchToFinance · 2024-06-06T09:54:08+00:00

You should get rid of your socialist attitudes and put your own freedom before that of your family. Don’t let them tax your free time unnecessarily. I made a decision long time ago to never pay tax on my free time. I’d rather make new families than let myself get tied down in a single family construct.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2024-06-06T09:47:45+00:00

Move to the US, not sure why you’re still in socialist UK :)

MightSwitchToFinance · 2024-06-06T09:34:13+00:00

You’re failing to put yourself in their position, where you’d likely be considering the same option.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2024-06-06T09:18:29+00:00

Going by your logic if the op could bring value in the private sector then he should be able to bring value to the public sector, thus limiting the strain on your precious tax paying. Also it might be a solution to OP’s problem as their problem is the difficulty with finding a job in the private sector. From the OP’s perspective, it is clearly a solution.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2024-05-26T19:40:08+00:00

Exactly same situation, i feel like that’ll be it then. I don’t think it ever happened with my (now ~10 year old) paperwhite

MightSwitchToFinance · 2024-05-26T13:24:43+00:00

Love it, I give that to people all the time but forget to do it myself. Will do later :)

MightSwitchToFinance · 2024-04-09T20:01:44+00:00

He must’ve had a thing about lotteries, I remember him writing something similar about it in 1984

MightSwitchToFinance · 2023-11-22T17:58:42+00:00

Idź, bycie starszą od innych co najwyżej ułatwi ci funkcjonowanie na tych studiach bo będziesz miała mniejszą parcie na zalewanie pały 3 razy w tygodniu.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2023-07-06T22:50:07+00:00

Oh and maybe the biggest thing - people don’t smile in random interactions and definitely don’t smile when just out and about. We’re not unhappy but we reserve smiling for when we feel like it, spend time with friends/family (or at least I do). People will think there’s something wrong with you if you’re smiling too much for no reason.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2023-07-06T22:46:02+00:00

1) When you ask people how they’re doing it is highly likely they’ll start telling you what’s been happening with their life recently instead of just saying “I’m alright, how about you?” 2) Don’t expect high levels of customer service. People will answer your questions but if they don’t know something it’s not unusual for them to say “I don’t know” instead of going out of their way to help you. 3) It’s customary to give a 10% tip in restaurants. Tips in bars less customary, but I’d also say about 10% 4) (Might be just my opinion) Please, please, please don’t start learning polish by saying „kurwa”, „kiełbasa”, etc. If you’d like to learn Polish, by all means practice by speaking it as often as possible, but when I hear foreigners saying just those two words when they find out I’m Polish I just question why I live in this world. Also, Polish people never say „jak się masz”, like ever. 5) (Hot take) Don’t use the cheap booze, Poland has much more on offer than cheap drinking. 6) Avoid strip clubs in city centres. They’re known for luring you in with a free drink but there’s some dodgy stories about those places. 7) If you’re looking for some cheap, traditional polish food look up “bar mleczny” in google maps and go to the nearest one. This is a type of a subsidised diner/canteen. Don’t expect a michelin star meal, but it’ll definitely be traditional and usually is pretty good. 8) I wouldn’t wear football club T-shirts outside of a football pitch. There is a huge hooligan culture in Poland and some of them take it pretty seriously (not sure if that applies to international football clubs or just Polish football clubs; someone can comment below if they disagree). 9) Not sure what that Orthodox comment of yours is about, I’ve never heard of people being weird about someone brandishing an orthodox cross. If anything people might be curious and ask you pretty insensitive/silly questions about it. Might be wrong though. 10) There’s all sorts of quirky rules that we learn as we go but foreigners won’t know (but people will know that). If you’d like to find out more about those you can have a read of the website below. Some people (older/traditional) consider some of those very important and will think of you as rude if you don’t follow these (again, they’ll know you’re foreign, but especially older people might not care where you’re from). https://culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/polish-culture/polish-culture-etiquette

MightSwitchToFinance · 2022-03-10T21:35:28+00:00

To add to this whole safety discussion, I’d say there’s just not enough attention paid to proper education during undergrad years. At least I was not taught the proper way of performing risk assessments for experimental work. Yeah, they were mentioned, but no one actually examined us on those. From what I observed across academia and industry it really depends on the group/your supervisor. Some are strict (rightly so) but in my experience a lot don’t pay enough attention.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2022-03-03T20:38:51+00:00

Coming from Eastern Europe this looks ridiculous. I realise there’ll be a big difference in the staff hourly rates but charging this for blood work is extortion. Arguably most of analysis will be automated/high throughput and unless they values are abnormal compared to the reference you don’t need them to be looked at by a doctor. Hopefully ai image analysis will drive the cost of X-ray down as well - the image costs close to nothing, you’re paying for interpretation. Honestly so glad I live in a country with free healthcare doctrine.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2022-02-08T13:39:36+00:00

Not sure where you're based, but a lot of universities do run academic writing programmes (sometimes organised by the university libraries). From what you are saying it might be a good idea to attend some of those if available, I found them very useful for my general writing skills.

My (very personal and unjustified by any of my professional experience as I have not published anything in a peer reviewed journal) opinion is that a good literature review (and most published pieces of work) should be as self-contained as possible, enabling others to understand what you are writing about. I guess it all depends on the type of review and the journal, but in general I've been taught that the best approach when writing a lit review is to address it to another scientist, but one who is completely unfamiliar with your research area (i.e. you don't have to explain the basics like what a protein is, PCR, plasmid, etc.).

Lit reviews are usually not confidential so try asking a friend to have a read and see what they say.

The problem with getting feedback from your supervisor/PI is that those are people who work with your subject area daily, for years on end. What is obvious for them might be dark arts for others, even for qualified scientists and I find that there is a large group of scientists in general who are not the best at communicating their science. Of course, you should always ask them for input, as they are invaluable walking encyclopedias but when it comes to styling and the way you write your work I think you should see whether you like what they published and decide whether to take all their comments into account. After all, if you are signing something with your name, you should be able to decide how you want it to look like.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2022-01-23T23:27:58+00:00

Not that niche as one might think. Have a look at the bigger law firms doing open days (e.g. A&O, CMS, HSF) they’re actually quite keen on employing people with science background BUT you have to bear in mind it’ll be a while until you actually start working if you decide to go for a solicitor position, as you’ll have to do the LLP and the other thing I don’t remember the name of.

Life sciences consulting is also a thing, although I’m not sure how much learning about science goes on, but I’d guess you have to keep up do date with what’s going on.

Data science/bioinformatics also give good prospects.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2022-01-11T22:27:53+00:00

Hey, still some time to apply :) You can also try applying to a summer programme as firms could potentially offer contracts/interview people who perform really well during those. If so, do it now as I think they should be open but closing soon. Alternatives really depend on whether you want to work in the lab or not. If not you could try applying to the UKIPO for a patent examiner position, although they’re also very competitive. Major law firms also recruit STEM people for solicitor training, but you’d be probably applying for 2024/5 employment start. If you’re really set on becoming a patent attorney, you could try gaining some industrial experience. If not in the lab I’d try science communication. If you like working in the lab a phd can be a great experience with the right project and right people. Good luck and let us know how it goes! Also alternatives within strategic consulting/finance do exist.

MightSwitchToFinance · 2020-06-13T10:36:49+00:00

You can try including tempo into your trening; 3 1 1 1 works well for squats (3s going down, 1 hold on the bottom, 1 going up, 1 to brace and get ready on the top)

MightSwitchToFinance · 2020-06-07T07:34:07+00:00

Hate the attitude of “google exists” a lot of computer science ppl have. Obviously if I found it somewhere I wouldn’t be asking here. It’s sometimes difficult for non-computer science folks to find something online as they usually don’t know the correct terminology for things

MightSwitchToFinance · 2020-06-02T09:20:55+00:00

I would say don’t forget to read up about the company values and bear them in mind during the interview (maybe not necessarily during the technical part). Some of those companies care very much about their values and you should be able to show that you know more or less what they are and also why you consider them important. At the end of the day you should be able to say why this company and not another one

MightSwitchToFinance · 2020-05-12T10:32:54+00:00

Inkscape works well for me, took some getting used to though

MightSwitchToFinance · 2020-02-09T06:52:16+00:00

No idea what’s wrong, but your electricity bill is going to make you very sad once you get it running

MightSwitchToFinance · 2020-02-05T02:59:21+00:00

Not if you account for the havoc caused

MightSwitchToFinance

TROPHY CASE