In terms of carrying out a placement year, I would highly recommend it. After all, this is your future and to be able to experience what life might be like for you at an early stage like this is something you cannot pass up. I have really enjoyed my time on placement and it has motivated me to work even harder going into my final year in order to achieve what I want.  If you didn’t enjoy your experience as much as you would have thought, then you will be able to reflect on your experience and perhaps look for a slightly different area of expertise later in your course.

A typical day in Harnas included an early start, generally at 6:30am with a morning meeting at around 8am with the project team in place. As a team, we would head out to dart a chosen large carnivore and enter the enclosure. My main roles included data collection for each large carnivore darted and giving a helping hand to the professionals carrying out the health tests.

After completing a number of health checks in the early part of the day, we would return to base and I would be responsible for inserting the data collected into an animal profile data base which I created. Also, my colleague and I would carry out faecal analysis on the samples taken from earlier in the day. My project colleague and I would then discuss our performance throughout the day and identify how we could improve for the next time.