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The Trading and Business internship within Integrated Supply and Trading (IST) is a great scheme for anyone to gain an insight into one of the biggest commodities trading houses in the world. The internship is well structured to give you access to the many different aspects of the business, while also allowing you to fulfil meaningful work.

The team I was placed in were incredibly welcoming and helpful, while as a group of interns within the office we all became good friends and often met up outside the office. One of the best aspects of the internship was how friendly and engaging everyone was within the office. As an intern everyone was interested in your development and experience, meaning employees at all levels of seniority were happy to sit down and have a chat about their career and to give advice.

On a day to day level my line manager was excellent, giving plenty of small bits of advice and guidance for my projects. With regard to the whole internship, it's very well structured to give you plenty of feedback about both the work you are doing, as well as the soft skills you need to succeed in business.

On the whole I was given plenty of work, and I was rarely sat there with nothing to do. That said, the workload did increase over the course of the internship. This meant that while in the early weeks there was time to speak to plenty of employees and build up your general knowledge about energy markets, towards the end much of my time was spent on my projects. My typical hours in the office were 8.30-5.30, which gave me a great work/life balance.

As with the workload, responsibility was built up throughout the placement. I was given the opportunity to present my work to the relevant stakeholders at various points and often asked questions about it. I felt that the work I conducted was valued by other employees.

The training I received was invaluable both for the work I completed, but also for the final year of my Economics degree. While not directly comparable to what I do in my course, being able to analyse data in the way that we were taught has helped me with my studies. The soft skills training, such as presentation training, was enjoyable and will continue to be useful in the future.

On the trading floor the atmosphere was calm and focused, and on the whole a very enjoyable place to work. While the people that I sat with varied in seniority, everyone was engaging and fun to work around.

The internship programme was very well structured. The Trading and Business internship gives you the opportunity to elect which graduate programme you'd like to be considered for, between the Commercial Grad Programme and the Trader Development Programme. There's plenty of opportunity to be exposed to people who are currently on and have in the near past been on both of the schemes, and plenty of help and advice is given as to which scheme best suits you. This means that if you aren't sure exactly what you'd like to do after University, this internship gives you a great chance to see a wide variety of roles within a company and then choose what you'd like to be considered for, all with the chance of gaining a graduate role before you start your final year.

As interns, we were given numerous training sessions at the beginning of the internship which allowed us to build up our knowledge of BP IST and the environment that it operates in. Furthermore, there were numerous training courses available to us over the course of our time there, which we were allowed to sign up for an attend with approval from our line manager. On the whole the training I attended was useful and enjoyable, both for the work I conducted at BP, but also for my final year of study.

There's an opportunity to be considered for both the IST Commercial Graduate scheme and the Trading Development Graduate scheme at the end of the internship. You are given regular feedback about your performance during the scheme, and at the end you have a review meeting where you are told if you are being offered a graduate position or not.

There was a very good social scene amongst the interns in the office, while a number of social events were also organised with those on the graduate programme. There were also a number of social events within my team in the time that I was there.

I was fortunate enough to live at home during my placement, at the cost of a very long commute, and so I'm not well placed to judge the cost of living. Canary Wharf is very expensive, especially when compared to Î÷¹ÏÊÓƵ prices.

The London nightlife is excellent, a definite step up from my Uni town.

All of the interns in the London area were involved in a volunteering day near the office, while there were numerous social activities offered. There is also a touch rugby team, and many interns played beach volleyball with their teams near the office.