5 Reasons To Love Work Experience
About a week ago I went on the age old tradition of work experience that was devised by teachers who wanted to be cruel to children and send them to the inside-of-your-nose sticky situation of being in the workplace.
For my work experience I went to my local primary school for two main reasons:
- I couldn’t get a placement at a Media company (radio etc.)
- As it is in my village, I could get up at 5 to 9 and arrive still on time.
Work experience has been an interesting period of time but I think it was very very valuable. If anyone wants to know about the experiences I had please leave a comment but this post is to explain why I think that work experience is valuable.
1. You Learn About Yourself
One of the universally felt things about work experience is that you learn new things about yourself. How to adapt to work, How to work with new people, How you handle yourself under pressure (Um ba ba be).
For me I learnt about how I could adapt to teaching smaller children and how I could actually help these children learn more about themselves and help them in maths. I learnt I had a better ability to explain things than I thought.
2. You Learn New Things
More than just the spite and evil of teachers being thrust upon us I think one of the reasons we have work experience is because you learn something and it might be useful to you later on in life. Just a suspicion.
This is though true. You learn to develop relationships with other people in the workplace and how to interact when going into a room full of people who for all you know before you crack open the door could be drug dealing vampires (everyone’s greatest fear). You also learn to handle yourself in social situations when you find the office agreeing that the same CD that has been playing every 1 hour 5 minutes is not driving you insane and that you love Cher.
3. It Helps You Decide Your Life
I’ve been told this life thing is a big deal so I went and got one and then when you are young foolish you have to take yourself away from the Jackassing (can that be a verb?) and decide what your going to do with your life, unless your Johnny Knoxville and make a living doing that.
It can help you decide whether you want to what you go on your work placement to do? It can make you rethink your whole life plan. What if you get to the hospital and faint at the first sight of blood despite your dreams of being a doctor? Maybe this will make you look at the legal or management side of medicine. Equally it could make you think you will hate your work experience but when you arrive being the guy who puts the sizes on coat hangers is your true calling.
It helped me realise that I could go into teaching with no serious issues and in fact really enjoy it. I think I would do it later in life though after having gained experience elsewhere in life.
4. Time To Think
This is not necessarily specific to work experience week but having the week off school gives you time to think and with the work experience focus gives you motivation to think about life, exams your future and gives you time to focus and get down to this whole revision for these big huge exams.
On my work experience other than hours spent watching 24 and being aggravated by the flirtatious Lara Croft in her latest expedition I spent plenty of time thinking about what I wanted to do for a career whether this was suiting me or not. It was valuable in this sense as we all should have the chance to follow our dreams so this was a nice chance to think about that and of course trusty Plan B which if we are honest is our Plan A.
5. Unforgettable Experiences
On my work experience I defiantly had so many unforgettable memories. The ones that leave you with feelings you know that you will remember for your entire life.
One of those feelings came on the Tuesday doing maths when I had previously given a pupil some help on a maths technique he didn’t understand and then he understood it and he managed to work through it the next few days and he understood it because of me. It is an amazing feeling let me tell you. There is the polar opposite where you want to lie down in front of a combine harvester while its moving but they are all feelings that help us grow.
I really don’t think at any point I will be able to forget my work experience and if I did it would be a tragedy because it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. I had some great times and anyone who thinks it is a waste of time should take it from em and everyone else who I spoke to and realise that it is a worthwhile experience and if you have someone who applies with real enthusiasm give them the chance.
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