What is a student team?
To start off, a student team is a team made up of – you guessed it – students, who work together to achieve a goal. Whatever the goal is depends on the student team, but for the most part, it typically involves designing and building a vehicle with the aim of competing against other student teams all over the world. UT boasts many top-tier student teams, and their goals range from designing a drone, rocket or robot to even a car. Moreover, there’s the Esports Team Twente, a student team not focused on developing a vehicle, but on improving eSports performance.
What you do in a student team depends on your role. You could be an electrical engineer for a motorcycle, with the goal of designing a specific circuit board. Or you could be a systems engineer for a robot, designing the robot to be controlled to the finest precision. You could also be an external or PR manager, which requires you to talk to companies and obtain sponsors for the team so that they can perform their engineering magic. This means that you don’t have to be an engineering student to be able to join a student team – there are plenty of roles suitable for social sciences students too.
Student teams include students of all kinds of backgrounds to operate day-to-day. They are, essentially, student-run companies, operating on a specified budget in order to complete a specific goal. You can’t just run a company by only employing mechanical engineers; you also need people who can manage the finances, talk to people, and run social media accounts to showcase what the company is doing to people on the outside. So if you’re in doubt about whether or not you should apply just because your study programme doesn’t fit what the team does, then cast those doubts away!
What does a typical day in a student team look like?
Again, this depends on what your role is and what your team does. I am an aerodynamics engineer at DroneTeam Twente, and right now, after three months with the team, I think I have a good idea of what my typical days look like in the Future Factory – the shared workshop where various student teams come together to work on their projects. I come into the office at 9 A.M (sometimes a bit later), realise that I should not have left a print overnight on a Prusa MK3s, and spend the entire morning melting off plastic from the nozzle and praying that I haven’t broken the thermistor.
In all seriousness, I do a lot of modelling in SolidWorks, a lot of simulation on aeroplane modelling software such as XFLR5, and I work a lot with the 3D printers DroneTeam uses. It’s pretty much just my own work from 9.00-12.30, then taking a lunch break for an hour, either by going to Lidl or hanging out with my team members for a bit, and then from 14.00 to 17.00, I either resume my own work or help out where the rest of the team needs me. It’s not all aerodynamics throughout the day – I help a bit with electronics and testing when they need me.
Is joining a student team worth it?
You get out of student teams what you put into them. If you’re only there just to spice up your CV while not actively involving yourself with the team, then there’s not much to say about when you’re at a job interview, and you get asked about what you did. On the other hand, if you’re actively showing up, doing what you can, and contributing to the team’s efforts, this shows recruiters that you were part of something. A little bird once told me that interviewers truly value this, as it shows dedication, passion, and skill.
Now, if you know that you have the drive and the passion to contribute to a student team, then a student team is absolutely worth it. There is no other way to get industry-like experience while having no experience going in. It is one of the best ways to gain practical experience as a student, and probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made as an undergrad. I’ve learned a lot and experienced what it’s like to actually, truly work with others outside of a controlled environment like a project group. Moreover, I got to talk to companies and professional engineers who seemed as though they were truly interested and impressed with the work we do.
Student teams help not only with developing your skills as a young engineer, but also by teaching you to work in a team, and what it takes to build a car or a rocket from scratch. And what’s more: being in a student team is fun. Yes, you’re building potentially dangerous vehicles, but you’re also doing it with other students the same age as you. It gets chaotic at times, and it sure gets stressful when it’s crunch time, but it’s all worthwhile when you see how everything comes together, and the thing you’re working on actually works.
So, in short: yes, it’s worth it. Even if your goal isn’t to take part in the engineering side of things, I’m sure you’ll still get a lot out of joining a student team. And if you truly want to design that boat, or build that plane, or even if you just want to learn how to 3D print – then look no further than UT’s student teams!
