Congratulations on the job, that is a good starting rate, so don't feel pissed. You gotta remember this is only the start of your career, and you got years to go.I recommend a placement year to anyone and advise them to sort it out asap. I learned so much from my placement year, because I got so much hands on experience. Uni's say that it improves your grades and I thought that was rubbish. Although my grades went from 4 B's and 4 C's in the second year, to 6 A's and 2 B's in the final year. I think its cos a lot of the work i done in the final year was stuff i learned on my placement which i applied to uni work.In terms of my job now, its not so daunting because i'm in a similar role to my placement job, so i know the ropes although we use completely different database technology. I can only talk from the IT field, but make your mark. Like i've already set up some reporting software to help managers analyse data. Do stuff that your fellow starters ain't doing to stand out.