What I wished I knew when I started in #1nt (with a mention of the people I would love every student to get to know). If I tag you, please tell people what you wish you knew too.

There's a whole world outside of the institutions, like the EU and UN. Commercial and independent #1nt can range from a tour of a nuclear power plant to driving a gigantic dumper truck. So much fun.

Business skills might not seem attractive at first and you might just want to interpret but seriously, thinking about some areas you might want to work on and polishing networking is important.

Talking about networking in #1nt, I totally underestimated how important good relationships with colleagues would be. All of my early projects came that way.

Sad to say but outside the giant conference markets (London, Paris, Brussels etc), you will need to have more than one string to your bow. Some interpreters work in court/medical and conference, some translate too, some speak, some teach. Have several skills. It helps a lot!

Join your national #1nt association and generally hang around association events, even if you don't see the point early on. It will matter.

If I were to start over again, I would look to get an undergrad that wasn't just about languages. Training in science or business or anything non-artsy would have been more useful than hours spent on The Faerie Queene and Milton.

Before humanities people hit me over the head with the works of Shakespeare, I think that for #interpreting having a languages & science or language & business or languages & anything background is a huge plus.

If you are studying #1nt, please try to get into the tech side, #rsi is huge, #CAI is creeping up and speech translation exists. You don't have to be as good as @adrechsel but understanding that stuff is good for you.

1 hour of CPD learning anything from experts like @adrechsel or @Goldsmith_Josh or @tulkur or Andy Gillies is worth days of scrolling through http://proz.com  job ads.

And to round this off, my biggest tip is to write to people whose work you admire. Almost evey #1nt person I know is super friendly and helpful and a single well-written email can make a bigger difference than you can imagine.

One last thing. I wish I'd come across @language_news and @Deutsch_Profi earlier and I'm glad I read so much from @tulkur and @InterpDiaries.