Hi, I'm a third year chemE student, not in the USA. Almost done with my first third year semester and I worked in the past 6 months in a private chemE company that mostly specializes in water treatment and waste treatment, we also have a process for a DOW DI water ion exchange in a big phosphoric acid and fertilizer plant. I started my first 3-4 months in the DOW ion exchange process and proving myself so they take me a bit more seriously given I'm just a student, but I genuinely enjoy working there and I like the job, so it was quite easy to be reliable and dependable and I even managed to be part of the solution of a complicated problem in this process. 3-4 months forward this plant had issues with insane amount of organic material in the phosphates they mine (4500 ppm TOC) and they had a hard time selling this contaminated phosphoric acid. Their R&D couldn't find a solution for a long time. After a few months of experiments and design we pitched an offer to this plant and they signed a contract for a pilot, I ended up reading a lot of research on the matter and I managed to turn this pilot from an okay process to a good process. The problem is, I spent a lot of effort in the improvement of the process and that took a toll in my ability to study, my grades weighted average across those 3 years so far is 84/100, but it is getting hard to do both simultaneously to my own standards that I see my grades are going to lower a bit, and I worry that my efforts at work won't be even viewed as relevant experience when I finish the degree for my next job as an engineer to justify the slightly lower grades I am probably going to get from putting a lot of effort in the pilot and at work in general. Hopefully a chemE from the industry here would give his insight, thanks.