Sakshi Education
When people talk about good companies for doing internship, one of the companies you hear is BIOCON. Even I had heard so; and also that it is amongst the best which come for chemical engineering students through the Nucleus team. It was amongst the first few companies to come and I was amongst the first few to whom the company was offered. I was concerned about it being a bio-tech related company and I had no clue of bio-technology. But still there were many odds in favor of it. It offers good projects and you get to learn a lot, as learnt from the seniors who went there the year before. It would pay you something decent enough. During the summer Bangalore was going to house at least 50 of us. We were 4 from chemical engineering and 6 from bio-technology, 10 in all for Biocon. Situation was similar for other companies too.
My internship started and I was allotted to work on membrane chromatography. It took me about a fortnight to get some basics and understand the whole process and to start carrying out the run all myself. I was greatly supported by another internee working on the project before my arrival. My work comprised mainly of carrying out many runs and analyzing the product. On the basis of the result I was supposed to make suggestions for the best reaction conditions.
In the beginning everything seemed new and interesting- working with big sophisticated instruments, handling weird, colorful, smelly products (most of the stuff around my workplace could weaken your immunity). Even the complete procedure to carry out the run was fascinating. It was solely in your hands when and how to do it and hence not much of a problem. But most of the analysis part had to be done by other departments. This is where the problem comes. Any department would always prefer to complete its job before working for some other department. This greatly delayed my project. I had all my products simply kept for analysis.
I used to spend most of my time with interns from my lab. I was the only one from IIT. All 10 of us from IITD had different workplaces. There were few interns from even other IITs like IITM. But because of the work load people from different labs couldn’t even go for lunch together. But thankfully most of the other interns present in my lab had completed their Masters and had a lot of knowledge. They made my life in Biocon easier.
But then came the day when all my co-interns in the lab had to leave. It was a moment when I felt like I was an underpaid lab assistant with a monotonous schedule work, a robot who is not supposed to use its brain- believe me nothing can be more irritating than this. But with time my interaction with other people in the lab increased, some new and interesting interns also joined and more importantly, I started getting some results from the analysis of my runs (and then use some of my leftover brain).
In all, the whole experience is supposed to leave a mark on you –be it about Biocon or Bangalore (especially when you leave the cool breezes and come back to Delhi to face this scorching heat). It taught me how to live in a workplace which is designed to make you work till you die. It taught me how to find friends among robots. It taught me how to revive yourself even when you feel like a robot.
-Swati Kumari - IIT Delhi
Published date : 12 Aug 2015 05:10PM
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