Work experience: not just an elaborate tea-making course

Work experience to the average pre-university student, or even first year student, mostly conjures up the following images:

1. Spending a week helping out in a school when you don’t really want to be a teacher, and taking up places of those actually training for a PGCE.

2. Helping out your dad / mum / high-flying uncle in their business.

3. Sending off numerous emails and letters begging a random company to let you spend a week in their office to appease your school or parents because you have ‘a real passion for copywriting / insurance / improving your skills as a telephone salesperson’.

4. Sitting at a desk. Bored. Making tea and photocopying boring forms.

The thought of working full time hours for no money is depressing, especially for a student, and can seem like a waste of time. But once second year comes around, you might begin to realise that you’re not actually sure what you want to be when you grow up. In fact, ‘when you grow up’ is right around the corner… maybe you should start to get some work experience sorted. After all, people are always telling you that experience is as important as a good degree in making you employable.

I had that moment last summer and decided to email multiple publications in a bid to find someone who would teach me the ropes, after deciding that journalism and the media was something that I was very interested in. Numerous friends already had an impressive résumé of placements, and I felt distinctly underprepared for the next year or so of my life. My editorial position at the Wessex Scene (the University student newspaper) should probably also be joined by an external placement on my CV.  So numerous emails, CV rewrites and hours of hunting down contact information later, I received two placement offers: both from regional newspapers, one in Southampton and the other back at home in Kent. They may not have been London-based magazines, but they were a start, and I was ecstatic to have received a response.

My first placement was back in April of this year, based at a daily regional paper in Southampton. Since it was a while ago, I won’t go into too much detail. However, it was a great first placement, it improved my confidence and I had a lot to do, including ‘vox pops’ (talking to the public), phone interviews, visiting court for the day and researching a potential murder case. It was a good place to start.

My second placement was just last week, and was only about a 20 minute bus ride from my house at home in Kent. I had grown up reading the paper, so was excited to witness how it all worked and, more importantly, to compare it to my first placement back in Southampton. The office was smaller, with a more intimate working environment. We also drank a lot more tea (I realise that’s the second mention of tea in as many blog posts. I promise I am not a tea-fiend). Although I didn’t go out and about as much this week, I wrote more articles and was given more responsibility. I had to make sure I was busy without relying on being told what to do. I also had to take initiative and follow up stories upon my own intuition. I developed great telephone skills and even joined the team for a post-print-deadline cider in the bar opposite the office!

My greatest achievement of the week, though, was seeing my name in print for the first time outside of the Wessex Scene and The Edge (the University’s student entertainment publication). The article was one that had been intended as a mere write-up of a village fete, but after some research and contacting some companies I uncovered that the event was a setting for a scene in a new television programme! Although I had written over ten more unnamed pieces, my larger article took up the whole of page 6 and is now up there as one of my proudest moments. It may not be front page of The Times, or a popular feature in Cosmopolitan (a guilty pleasure of mine) but it’s a step in the right direction and a fantastic addition to my portfolio.

Seeing my name under my work in a regional newspaper has made my week!

My plans for the future? Over the next few months I hope to be sending out my (now improved) CV to more publications, asking for their time and patience and, of course, a cherished place for some work experience. Hopefully, in ten years’ time, my name will be in print in a national publication, on a popular blogging site, or plastered all over Facebook.

It turns out that work experience is not so much an annoying requirement, then, as an exhilarating opportunity.

Joanne