Well 2-3 months have passed, we're all back at Uni and it's the business end of the semester. Deadlines are left, right and centre and procrastination is rife among the student population: flats are being tidied, gyms are being attended, meals are being cooked - and finally essays are being done. Somehow amid all the chaos, I find myself with only one essay left to do before Christmas and a graduate job lined up... wahey!

When I think back to the summer, I still can't believe what we all did. It seems like I'm remembering some kind of crazy dream. But no: we all did it, we all applied to get an impossible internship, got the phonecall, leapt into the air and celebrated, launched ourselves into the international market and came back successfully.

I've been thinking about what the Saltire Foundation scheme has meant to me: how has it changed me? Firstly, nothing scares me anymore. Presentations that would've been quite intimidating last year are nothing. The prospect of being sent to Rotterdam to train for 6-8 weeks is 100% something to look forward to, whereas before the summer that feeling would've been watered down by around 50% of trepidation. I have a renewed confidence about what I can achieve and how I can leave my mark.

Another thing I think that the Saltire Foundation wanted us to see was the culture; business culture is all about "how we do things here" and I didn't realise this before but it varies hugely - not only from company to company but undoubtedly from country to country. After sampling a different culture, we're in a brilliant position to bring a different perspective to our new jobs. We'll be able to make suggestions that others wouldn't even think of and help give the businesses we work for an unparalleled edge.

Finally, spending 8 weeks in America means I finally understand those damn "non-SI" units that I'll inevitably be using in the oil industry. Non-engineers/scientists might not understand this point but... imagine going to France where everyone speaks French. If you're not fluent, you translate the French you hear into English, think of your reply in English then re-translate into French. This is what I had to do with Fahrenheit (instead of Celsius) etc. Now a fluent French speaker will be able to think in French, bypassing those translation steps! Hopefully I'm one step closer to shortening that line of communication in the oil industry and with American engineers..! After all, it was this break-down in communication between British and American physicists that once sent an unmanned spacecraft crash-landing somewhere costing billions of dollars...

Anyway, how's everyone else getting on? Exams? Assignments? Job hunt? Gap years?