Trainees from Malaysia
We are a group of undergraduate students from Malaysia, currently pursuing our Bachelor of Science (Hons.) in Applied Chemistry at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), Malaysia. As we are in our third year of our undergraduate studies, we are required to seek traineeship opportunities in related industries. This was the perfect opportunity as UTP signed an agreement with UCT. Thus, we decided to grab this once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience traineeship life abroad, in Prague, Czech Republic.
The seven-month traineeship at UCT was a very valuable and memorable experience indeed as we gained a lot of soft skills and practical skills that helped us in our studies and career. In the beginning, when we accepted my traineeship in this particular department, we were quite uncertain and lacked self-confidence that we would perform well in our works. However, under the proper guidance of our supervisor/advisors (Jara and Viola), we managed to excel in our performance, and it had exceeded our expectations.
Being in UCT has truly given us insight into the researching world and what it is all about. From this experience, we have learned that researching is quite intense as it is time-consuming and requires great patience. In order to achieve excellent results, a step-by-step process must be followed which requires energy and time. Throughout our traineeship here in UCT, we have witnessed multiple failures and errors. However, from these failures, we were able to improve day-by-day and eventually produce great outcomes. The dedication and effort that we have contributed eventually pay off when success is achieved. We feel satisfied with the overall outcome of our project as they have progressed well and developed exceptional results.
It took us a few weeks to get used to this new work environment at UCT especially when being in a foreign country. This experience definitely encouraged us to work out of our comfort zone and to be more outspoken with the help of our advisors. In the end, we managed to adapt well with not only our personal well-being but also in terms of our traineeship project at UCT. We have grown more comfortable with our work schedules and procedures that we are able to perform tasks independently with minimal supervision of our advisors.
As a whole, we believe that this internship was successful in furthering our knowledge in a career in the field of chemistry. Completing the scientific research internship was very rewarding. The experience we gained working in the lab will surely give us an advantage when doing our final year project in UTP. Besides, this opportunity helps us understand concepts on catalytic chemistry which requires broad knowledge and a lot of literature review. Sometimes it could be frustrating when we were not able to find an answer to the problems by reading through articles. We have learnt a lot about catalyst preparation, heterogeneous catalysis, and how different factors may affect the overall reaction.
Our advisors were tremendously helpful in making sure that we understood our projects well. Any uncertainties that we had regarding the work was guaranteed to be acknowledged by our advisors. We all know that practical work gives us a wholesome experience and it is the best way to prepare ourselves for our future careers. This traineeship gives us the opportunity to improve hands-on by applying the theoretical knowledge that we have learnt in UTP.
By Nur Amira Azmi and Chiew Mey Onn (Malaysia)