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Firms definitely don't want any of their vac scheme students doing ridiculous hours. For an in person VS your supervisors will most likely chase you out at 5.30pm. Unless you are adamant about having some urgent work that needs completing, in which case I know some people who have maybe stayed until about 6.30pm, but beyond that, you will quite literally be chased out. There is slightly more flexibility with a virtual VS (personally on some days I worked well past 5.30 for two of my vacs purely because I needed the additional time to produce good work) but even then I had my supervisor notice I was online at 8pm once and he gave me a very stern call to tell me to log off immediately.


With regards to chasing people up for work to do, if you find yourself with nothing to do, then yes definitely take the initiative to find work. I've given quite a few tips on this above but in summary:

  1. Ask your supervisors or trainee buddies first for work. If they don't have anything at the moment (rarely ever the case actually) then reach out to someone whose work you would genuinely be interested in getting involved with
  2. If you're really stuck for work, maybe ask if your trainee buddy has any documents or contracts you can review so that way you are keeping yourself occupied while still learning.

Honestly, try not to worry about doing "too little" work and definitely don't compare workloads with other vac schemers (I was very guilty of this and it really unnecessarily stressed me out) . It's a lot better to complete a few tasks to a really high standard than to do too much to a poor standard.


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