Student Testimonials - FST3800 Food Science Internship
The internship provided me a meaningful learning experience as I gained not only hands-on and technical skills, but also communication skills. It helped me realize that it is important to master different languages in a multilingual nation. The internship also improved my understanding of the role of quality control in the food industry and prepared me to manage different jobs related to food science and technology in my future career. I am grateful that I met a lot of nice and friendly people during the internship, which made my journey more enjoyable.
The internship provided me with valuable hands-on experience and gave me the opportunity to apply the knowledge I've studied to real-world situations. It also improved my social skills as I needed to report my analysis results daily and discuss corrective actions to be taken if the product was out of specification. The best part of this internship was getting to learn a lot from totally competent, friendly professionals at Sasa about seasoned flours and sauces production, and the quality checking process. I was also invited to a team after-work dinner, and it made me feel like we were a big family!
My internship experience was totally enriching and amazing. I gained deeper insights into the food manufacturing industry and developed a better understanding of each task that was assigned to me throughout the internship. There were lots of valuable hands-on experiences that I gained through my involvement in various tasks. Sometimes I had to multitask but I was grateful to be given the opportunity to improve myself through various challenges. Undoubtedly, the biggest takeaway is to bond friendships in my internship. It was great to know such loving and kind colleagues as they are always willing to show guidance and give some advice to me.
I was given the opportunity to work at a local yoghurt factory. My work scope covered food quality checking and product development. During my internship, I was exposed to the different methods of analysing the physiochemical characteristics of yoghurt products. I also participated in the process of making new yoghurt products. These involved a series of procedures from market trend study to formulation testing to achieve product well received by the consumers.
Most importantly, this experience has taught me how to look at every problem critically and finding its solution through questioning, self-researching and trying. I am so ever grateful to my colleagues and supervisors who guided and supported me through the entire journey. This meaningful journey has given me a glimpse of how the food industry works and showed me an idea of how my future potential job would look like.
I’ve went through my internship at a local organization, Trapezium. Trapezium is a central kitchen that manufactures lunchboxes and beverages to many universities around Selangor, including Monash University.
The whole idea of this internship is to allow me to observe diligently on the industry’s importance as well as supply and demand. Hence, throughout the 9 weeks of internship, my supervisor and the head chef of the organization whom I had the opportunity to work closely with, had assigned me with different tasks on a monthly basis. Performing task such as calorie count, food packaging/ labelling as well new product developing cost was within my job scope and I was lucky enough to be able to put my knowledge into good use whilst gaining new skills and experiences at the same time. Upon completion of the internship, I’ve managed to gain insights on the operational flow of the central kitchen and was really glad with the fruitful outcome.
Work aside, it should be noted that a working environment and culture is an important factor that one should not dismiss. Even though my internship lasted as long as 9 weeks only due to Covid-19 situation, I am proud to admit that the people and culture of Trapezium is definitely one of the memories I miss the most. During my stay under Trapezium, many had taken me under their wings and treated me as though I’ve always been part of the team even though I was totally new. Many had encouraged me and provided necessary feedbacks that helped me grew in terms of personality and work performance. It was such treatment that I am forever grateful for because this has allowed me to develop new networks and friendships along the way.
Working in a real-world industry, I realized that not only technical skill is important, but having good social skill is equally as important. It is crucial to be able to communicate with different types of people and to show good leadership. Thus, the importance of communication and leadership ability is the most significant thing I learned from this experience. Lastly, the best part of the internship is being able to meet many different types of people regardless of their work status, as all of them are friendly and helpful, it makes me feel as though we were a big family.
After my internship journey, I realized how important it is and I would strongly recommend students from any field to do an internship during their course. It will be such a waste to not grab this opportunity and make connections and learn from people with many years of industrial experience that can make us grow better. I enjoyed working in Markaids as there will always be new different tasks or projects assigned to me daily that keep me productive and motivated. I felt grateful that I was able to learn a lot from Markaids about food industrial production and the importance and role of food ingredients in our day-to-day meat products.
The internship was very valuable as it provided me with hands-on experience. I was able to apply my knowledge as a food science and technology student in various day-to-day tasks related to the bean to bar process of chocolate production. This really strengthened my learning. The best part of this internship was being given the opportunity to innovate and use the company's available equipment and resources to develop my own chocolate recipe. It was a thorough learning experience and greatly boosted my confidence, as the company is considering introducing the product into the market.
The internship taught me to apply the knowledge that is taught in the university to the work-life. At university, I was taught the basics of chocolate making process. I understand the meaning of tempering chocolate and the purpose of doing it. However, I did not study it in detail. By doing this internship, I understand the purpose of each process in making chocolate. The most interesting task was developing a new flavour of chocolate.