where did you go for work experience?

[Jc_39a]

And did you enjoy it?

 

I'm trying to apply for some atm but don't know which job to do. So I want to hear from you guys.

[tranceking26]

I had little choice because I was one of the last ones to be shown the list. I picked Sainsburys shopping centre.

 

It was ok, but because of my age at the time I was only able to clean the tables and dishes in the restaurant and stack shelves.

Edited March 11, 2014 by drr26

[Graven]

You mean school work experience? That´s long long time ago for me. We had 1 week at 8th & 9th grade if I right recall.

I worked in institution, the morgue fascinated me.

Edited March 11, 2014 by Graven

[Jc_39a]

Yeah school work experience

[GTA_stu]

I went to work for Hull Trains for 2 weeks. It was boring as f*ck. I was in an office doing the tickets, I basically had a long list of ordered tickets, and I had to enter the details into a computer then print them off. I also had to run really pointless sh*tty errands for the people I was working with, which included going to someone's car and getting their sandwiches that they'd left in there. I did get to go on a train once, and sit in the driver's seat. It wasn't moving though, which was probably a good thing because there were a spate of suicides on the tracks the 2 weeks I was there. Last thing you want to experience at that age is seeing someone splatter across a window a few inches from your face. Actually at that sick and twisted age, it's probably something you do want to see.

 

I ended up as something of a revelation, and outperformed the full-time employees in the department I was working in. I printed more tickets than the other 3 people combined. I can see why child labour is so popular across the world, because kids really do get sh*t done. The guy in charge of the company gave me 4 free 1st class return tickets to London as a reward (I'd mentioned that I often visited my family in London with my parents and sister) as well as some vouchers, and he even baked me a cake. He said I was pretty much guaranteed a job there too if I ever wanted one.

 

It was pretty boring overall, but I did enjoy it in a weird way.

[iiGh0STt]

the military...

it's hit or miss in the civilian world. They either want you after that or they don't... explosives guys with 1 leg are not very appealing to hiring personnel.

[Audiophile]

I'm actually trying to lock down a field placement for school work experience, too.

 

I need it to get into my fourth and final year, and thus to graduate. I have an interview on the 27th but not too confident about it at the moment because of all sorts of BS my school is requesting as a "requirement" for something to qualify as proper work experience.

[iiGh0STt]

I wish I was provided with some of these opportunities. Just stay confident.

From what I just read, students are placed with employers primarily to observe and learn – not to undertake activities which require extensive training or expertise.

So your school handles it? or is it essentially like an interview for a potential job and something that you individually found?

[hornedturtle]

I went to a vet. first day was a horse getting a c-section

[Mr. House]

I was a receptionist in hell's waiting room. Boy, you won't believe the evil sh*t middle class people get up to in their spare time!

[Audiophile]

I wish I was provided with some of these opportunities. Just stay confident.

 

From what I just read, students are placed with employers primarily to observe and learn – not to undertake activities which require extensive training or expertise.

 

So your school handles it? or is it essentially like an interview for a potential job and something that you individually found?

 

Some schools handle it entirely for you: they set up an interview and you just have to show up and not screw it up. These schools have my respect because they understand that in certain fields, such as law where I am, it's mainly about who you know when you're starting out. It's difficult for students to find a placement. Yet they are required to complete one in order to graduate.

 

My school does nothing to help you. The opportunities I found were completely on my own and by my own merit. Not only is my uni not helping but they're giving me additional hoops to jump through. It has to be a paid placement and it's 490 hours long, 120 of those hours have to be under the supervision of a lawyer.

 

Here's the deal....most other placements only require 100 something odd hours. That's what employers are used to. I've had some turn me away simply because they're like "wow 490 hours? We don't have the time and resources for that". It's bad enough it's 490 hours but they have to be paid? Employers aren't into that. For free? Hell yeah! Paid? Uhhh, it's not in our budget...sorry.

 

I've managed to find a paid work placement that I can do the 370 hours at. But the place has no on-staff lawyer. So now I have to find a place with a lawyer where I can do the 120 under a lawyer at. I have an interview on the 27th at a non-for-profit organization who are basically like a legal clinic. I managed to convince my program coordinator to let me do the 120 under a lawyer for free as I've found a paid placement to do the other hours at. She was ok with it.

 

But I'm not too confident about this interview on the 27th at the non-for-profit because when I spoke to my contact there in January, I told her 490 hours. That's what I am going in there with her thinking, now I have to scale it down to 120 hours and I read a few of their position ads and they want a commit time of 3 months, at least.

 

So I've got that going and on the side I'm trying to pull some family contacts to hook me up with a lawyer. One side of my family owns businesses around Canada so they do work with a lot of lawyers. Whether those contacts extend to me? Ha, we'll see. So far I see no movement on their part.

 

Feels bad, mang. I need to start this by end of April or I won't get all the hours I need.

[Jc_39a]

My work experiene will be two weeks, they have extended it

[gtamann123]

My mom got me my first job so I didn't need any experience. But the company laid me off aftet one month. It was ok tjough it was really boring and really sh*tty paying ($10.50 per hour to run a boring machine) And then after that happened my best friends dad hired me onto his company. Its kind of crazy I have had two jobs and never had to fill out an application or have an interview.

[GTA_stu]

My school gave us the option of picking our own place, or them providing us with one. I tried to get work in a solicitors office, because at the time I thought I wanted to do that as a career. I applied to a place called "Payne & Payne Solicitors" because they shared the same last name as me lol, and I mentioned it about 5 times in my application letter. They rejected me though, and so I got put with Hull Trains.

 

It was in the city centre, so it meant I could have lunch at McDonald's every day. I actually met about 5 or 6 other kids that went to my school in there over the course of the 2 weeks. It's not like we planned to meet or anything, we were all just based near the city centre and ended up going there because when you're that age McDonald's for lunch is like a dream.

[EphemeralStar]

Is this an American thing? I only had work experience during highschool for a specific co-op class, that technically I didn't need to take. I worked at a preschool and a bakery. Then before entering college I needed more exp in working with kids for my program that I volunteered at another preschool, but I never got paid for any of these. Even on one of my practicums I literally paid 500 to work at a preschool for FREE. It's bs.

Edited March 11, 2014 by EphemeralStar

[universetwisters]

I did landscaping the past few summers because my moms boyfriend owned a landscaping company.

 

I hated every minute of it, especially on the hot, humid Florida days. Only thing good about it was the pay. At $10 an hour, you could easily make $90 a day.

[Mr. House]

Is this an American thing? I only had work experience during highschool for a specific co-op class, that technically I didn't need to take. I worked at a preschool and a bakery. Then before entering college I needed more exp in working with kids for my program that I volunteered at another preschool, but I never got paid for any of these. Even on one of my practicums I literally paid 500 to work at a preschool for FREE. It's bs.

It's a common thing in England too. If I recall correctly, I did it at 14. Well actually I didn't, the School f*cked the placement up and the business I was supposed to work at did not exist so I sat in the library with some punk kid for the week and we threw paper aeroplanes around the room.

[Audiophile]

Yeah, here in Canada we have to do mandatory volunteer work in high school, too.

 

You have from grade 9 until grade 12 to complete 40 hours (in the province of Ontario, think it differs province to province) of volunteer work to graduate. As I recall, I didn't do sh*t. I had a job that actually paid and had no time to do mandatory "volunteer" work. So I just had an elderly family member with a different last name sign my volunteering sheet saying that I helped her out in the neighbourhood for 42 hours.

 

My high school was like "lolok" and I got the 40 hours needed to graduate. They can f*ck off with their mandatory volunteering. Ain't nobody got time fo dat! And not exactly volunteering from the bottom of your heart if you're forced to do it, now is it? In high school it was also completely on your own. You had to find it, you had to complete it. Responsibility was all yours, cocksuckers at the school left you to fend for yourself even though they're forcing students to complete this BS. Excuse the language but I hate mandatory "volunteer" work like this with a passion. Especially when they force you to do it but take no part in guiding you through the process.

 

But the situation I posted about earlier is a mandatory work term placement needed to graduate for my degree. It's completed in third year of your degree and you need it to get into the fourth and final year. I get the point of that but it's the fact that again, they aren't doing sh*t to help students and just throwing them more hoops with "hurrr this wouldn't be good enough for a placement".

Edited March 11, 2014 by Audiophile

[gtamann123]

I did landscaping the past few summers because my moms boyfriend owned a landscaping company.

 

I hated every minute of it, especially on the hot, humid Florida days. Only thing good about it was the pay. At $10 an hour, you could easily make $90 a day.

Cash or did you pay taxes on it?

[universetwisters]

 

I did landscaping the past few summers because my moms boyfriend owned a landscaping company.

 

I hated every minute of it, especially on the hot, humid Florida days. Only thing good about it was the pay. At $10 an hour, you could easily make $90 a day.

Cash or did you pay taxes on it?

 

Straight cash

[Frank Brown]

 

 

I did landscaping the past few summers because my moms boyfriend owned a landscaping company.

 

I hated every minute of it, especially on the hot, humid Florida days. Only thing good about it was the pay. At $10 an hour, you could easily make $90 a day.

Cash or did you pay taxes on it?

 

Straight cash

 

He works for the IRS.

 

Good work.

[gtamann123]

 

 

I did landscaping the past few summers because my moms boyfriend owned a landscaping company.

 

I hated every minute of it, especially on the hot, humid Florida days. Only thing good about it was the pay. At $10 an hour, you could easily make $90 a day.

Cash or did you pay taxes on it?

 

Straight cash

 

That pay is pretty decent then. When I lived in Daytona I worked for a contractor that paid me cash and I made like $100 a day. Seems like the common way of doing things down there.

Edited March 11, 2014 by gtamann123

[universetwisters]

 

 

 

I did landscaping the past few summers because my moms boyfriend owned a landscaping company.

 

I hated every minute of it, especially on the hot, humid Florida days. Only thing good about it was the pay. At $10 an hour, you could easily make $90 a day.

Cash or did you pay taxes on it?

 

Straight cash

 

He works for the IRS.

 

Good work.

 

Well it was paying under the table though, so...

[Hodgey.]

When I was in high school we did two weeks of work experience and I worked in a place that made window frames.

[trip]

I must have missed the work experience thing. It wasn't part of my high school or university career. We had one university that offered a co-op program when I was in school, but that was one of the universities for smart kids and I went to the university for regular kids.

 

Can I count the jobs I had in high school and such as work experience? My first paycheck job was in a cheese steak place and I didn't have it for too long because I hated the asshole son of the owner.

 

I spent almost nine years working in the speciality pet industry. Great times.

 

 

Do you think organized work study actually helps? What would one gain?

[Abel.]

There weren't any placements relevant to my field of interest when I was 14 so the careers adviser set me up at a coastal conservation centre. I'm not an eco-warrior or anything, but I really enjoyed the week--good, strenuous work in the fresh air and great banter with the people at the centre. Overall, it was a good experience, and far better than fetching coffee or whatever other tedium my mates had to go through.

 

 

 

Trip: At 14/15 most kids don't get much from work experience as, at that age, it usually boils down to fetching tea or photocopying, but at university placements are critical for certain subjects. Students looking to enter finance have to do work experience from basically their first year of university these days in the form of highly selective internship schemes leading up to summer placements and, potentially, jobs (well, unless you're an Oxbridge student, in which case you're basically guaranteed a job regardless of work experience).

 

 

Universetwisters: Good stuff right there, mate. I've got some laboring lined up for the summer myself.

 

Audiophile: I can't imagine many kids here motivating themselves to find placements for volunteering like that. Hell, a lot of kids I knew in high school had to help their families by working part-time, so having to deal with mandatory volunteering too would be insane. I can't help but feel that it defeats the selflessness of volunteering if you're being forced to do it, too.

 

The closest thing to that here is the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, which is close enough to mandatory as secondary schools spend so much time banging on about how "useful" it is on your CV/personal statement that a lot of kids do it. Sure, if students enjoy it, that's cool, but at 16 I saw the whole endeavor as a waste of time back then.

Edited March 11, 2014 by elanman

[universetwisters]

I spent almost nine years working in the speciality pet industry. Great times.

 

Specialty pets? Like exotic birds or ankle-biting yuppie dogs?

[trip]

 

I spent almost nine years working in the speciality pet industry. Great times.

 

Specialty pets? Like exotic birds or ankle-biting yuppie dogs?

 

Both.

 

Before the days of the internet and before the days of big pet supply stores; Wealthy people needed a place to cater to them and their animals. Not only did I have to be certified in a bunch of pet stuff (like nutrition and tech), but I also had professional training in ass kissing.

 

As far as 'work experience' goes, I really owe a lot to the ass kissing training I got at that job. No lie.

[Abel.]

Yeah I definitely agree that boot licking is a skill which needs to be learned. We so strongly venerate characters who pander to no one that forcing yourself to do it for the sake of employment feels unnatural unless you've done it before. Hell, half of the films to come out of the 1980s involved teaching teenagers to hate authority figures (principal from The Breakfast Club, Ted's father in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and so on).

[Crazyeighties]

And did you enjoy it?

 

I'm trying to apply for some atm but don't know which job to do. So I want to hear from you guys.

The school of life followed by the school of hard knocks. One night I was bored so I applied for a job 6 hours later I revived a phone call telling me if I wanted a job it was mine.....