Master of Bioscience Engineering:

Sustainable Urban Bioscience Engineering

Reflection during the internship

Reflection during the internship

During your internship, students are not only expected to do professional work, but also to learn from doing it. Regular reflection helps students turn daily experiences into lasting learning.

By writing a short blog post (300-500 words each) every five working days, you create a structured learning log that allows you to support your learning process by helping you connect experience with theory and develop professional insight over time.

If the students encounters difficulties during the internship, he first tries to solve them with the internship supervisor and contacts the internship coordinator or the academic supervisor if necessary.

The blog posts are written on the Blackboard course. Failure to submit regular posts can result in a fail for this course.

Guiding questions for these posts are provided below. Students are free to deviate from them if they wish.

Guiding questions

Beginning of the internship

First impressions

  • What are your first impressions of the organisation and its culture?
  • How is work organised (formal/informal, structured/flexible, hierarchical/flat)?
  • What seems important in daily work (priorities, values, ways of working)?
  • What already feels complex or challenging (e.g. different stakeholders, mixed goals, technical vs. social aspects)?

Expectations & goals

  • What do you want to learn during this internship?
  • What kind of tasks or responsibilities do you expect?
  • What does a successful internship mean for you (beyond just finishing tasks)?

Skills & development

  • Which skills do you want to develop (e.g. communication, teamwork, analytical thinking, initiative)?
  • In which situations do you want to become more confident (e.g. meetings, teamwork, problem-solving)?
  • What do you want to learn about yourself as a future professional?

During the internship

Surprises & learning

  • What has surprised you in how the organisation works?
  • What is different from what you expected or learned at university?
  • How do different roles or disciplines work together in practice?

Challenges

  • What was a difficult situation or task?
  • What made it difficult?
  • How did you approach it?
  • Did you ask for help or work with others? How did that help?
  • What would you do differently next time?

Link with your studies

  • Which knowledge, tools or concepts from your studies did you use?
  • Where did they work well in practice?
  • Where did you need to adjust or rethink them?

Working in practice 

  • When did you take initiative or work independently?
  • How did you communicate with different people (colleagues, experts, non-experts)?
  • When did you have to deal with unclear or missing information, and how did you handle it?
  • What role did you take in teamwork (e.g. organiser, contributor, observer, mediator)?

(Near the) end of the internship

Key learnings

  • What are your three most important lessons?
  • What changed in how you think or work?
  • What did you learn about working in real-life, complex situations?

Organisation & context

  • How has your view of the organisation or sector changed?
  • What did you misunderstand at the beginning?
  • Where do you see differences between theory and practice?

Skills & competencies

  • Which skills from your master’s programme were most useful?
  • How important were teamwork and communication in your internship?
  • Where did you apply analytical or structured thinking?

Personal & professional growth

  • How have you grown during this internship?
  • What are your strengths and what still needs development?
  • How would you describe yourself as a professional now compared to the start?

Advice for future interns

  • What should future students pay attention to in the first weeks?
  • What helps most when things are unclear or difficult?
  • What would you do differently if you could start again?

Mid-term check-in with internship organisation

The internship coordinator plans a low-key mid-term contact moment with the internship supervisor (by phone or e-mail), where the student’s progress and possible difficulties can be discussed briefly. When serious problems arise, the academic supervisor will be involved and a meeting will be planned. The student can be invited for this meeting.

 

Absence during the internship

In case of absence due to illness or other force majeure (e.g. family emergency), you are required to make up for the missed days at a later time. Please inform your internship supervisor as soon as possible and submit the completed absence notification form (see below) without delay to internship.sube@uantwerpen.be.

Absence notification form

Internships performed in academic year 2025-2026 (not applicable anymore)

Three weeks after the start of the internship, the student provides an intermediate account to the academic supervisor and the internship coordinator at internship.sube@uantwerpen.be . This intermediate account of max. 1 page provides an brief overview of the tasks already undertaken and planned, and reflects on the intern’s initial experiences. If the students encounters difficulties during the internship, he first tries to solve them with the internship supervisor and contacts the internship coordinator or the academic supervisor if necessary.