My Work Experience!

Hello, My name is Lauren and I’m a 4th year on work experience. Work experience is when you go out of school and into the working world for one week, you get to see all the different jobs that are out there, for example before this I had no idea what happens behind the scenes in museums, or how to get up to Haddington for that matter. Work experience for me was all about going out finding what I want to do when I leave school and now I think I know what I want to do.

You must excuse if my blogging skills aren’t perfect and if there is typo’s or grammar mistakes for I haven’t blogged in awhile.

I guess I should start with the start of my week or rather a quite funny story which happened the week before; During my last week of school before the work experience, in my social education class (a class where you learn about social stuff, e.g drugs, responsibilities etc) we had to go and find our way to our place of work. Now me, not ever been up to Haddington on my own before thought “OK I can do this” but after asking two bus drivers and showing them the map I started to get confused. I texted my mum asking “Does the 44 Balerno go to Haddington?” turns out I was on the wrong side of the road!! so after that palaver and crossing the road i finally got on the right bus but again, i asked for a single ticket…got charged double the amount of what I thought it was! turned out you have to say CHILD SINGLE instead of just SINGLE. I was not happy.

Anyway, getting back to the point of this blog, my work experience week. Monday was quite a nervous day for me I think, after arriving at Headquarters (I managed to get the right bus and fare this time). After I signed in, Sarah and I left to go to John Muir’s Birthplace which is in Dunbar. There I met Kevin who taught me what a Museum Assistant does, although when he was busy with a guest who was asking a question, a lady came up and asked me if she could buy one of the books on sale! I had no idea what i was meant to do but i managed to figure it out before Kevin came back which made me feel quite smart. After that Sarah, me and the other people who Sarah was in a meeting with all left Kevin to go across to Dunbar Town House which is opening sometime next year in 2012. They talked about where they were going to put stuff while I went upstairs and started on my tasks for the week. I had to google and write down some popular toys of the 1990′s and 2000′s, now some of you may think Oh that would have been easy! the toys were not allowed to run on electricity and had to be quite small e.g Nintendo DS’s would not have been allowed if I wrote them down.

While on Tuesday, my nerves had settled and I was looking forward to the rest of the week, I arrived and signed in like on Monday. That day we were meant to go Prestongrange Museum. We were meant to go around 11 or 12 but we couldn’t for they had a minor problem…Graffiti. So instead of going there and getting in the people’s way, we stayed up at HQ to have lunch. I started on my second task of the week which was to research Mary Queen Of Scots and the Battle Of Pinkie Cleugh. I found out a lot of interesting stuff like that instead of giving in Mary’s mum sent her daughter off to France…wow! I bet my mum wouldn’t do that.

So anyway, we finally went to Prestongrange and wow isnt it MASSIVE! there are 3 main buildings all spread out over a vast area of grass. I got a lovely tour  around the Beam Engine by Kevin who was there. I got shown the Power House where I had a few little jobs/tasks to do, I got to look at all the 1960′s dressing up things they had and I could not resist the temptaion to dress up in some of the items. I swapped my normal glasses for glasses that looked like John Lennon from the beatles glasses (small and round sunglasses) wtih a blue and red stripy hat! Kevin said I look “major wicked” and I agreed.

Wednesday was a really fun day, I got to go on EAST COAST FM!!! which is a radio station that you can only hear on the internet, I managed to get a “shout out” to my mum and played one of her favourite songs, Flying Without Wings by Westlife. After that I got into the Museum Store which is where they keep all the artefacts that are not on display in any of their museums. I helped Clare with writing down what contents where in some archaeology find boxes. Sarah also asked me to make some “poo” for Prestongrange. I had to find some interesting/gory facts and write them on pictures of poo. It was one of the most strange things I have ever been asked to do.

Thursday was an ok day. I went with Sarah around to different schools collecting loan boxes. We went to North Berwick and other places. Returning with these boxes, it was my job to look inside the boxes and check if the contents in the box matched what was on the contents list. After doing that I finished off the “poo” task, the Mary Queen Of Scots research and the toys things. Finally I go to my favourite task, going back into the store and writing down the contents of what was in the archaeology find boxes.

Then finally, today, Friday 14th October. I met Sarah at 10 outside the visitor centre at Prestongrange, where we then walked through all the mud and grass in our wellys to find a nursery class who we were meant to watch and see what they were doing. I had so much fun with the little kids, I even got in the mood for looking and finding bugs! I found a worm,a spider, 3 slugs (2 normal looking and 1 bright yellow) then an USI (or a unidentified strange insect). After having snack with the kids, which was a digestive biscuit and a slice of apple, we all walked down holding hands to their bus. Waving goodbye, me and Sarah left and drove back to HQ, where my Work Experience Log Book was waiting. The log book had to be filled in and signed each day at the end, everyday you had to answer different questions like on Wednesday a question was “Do the people at your workplace belong to a trade Union? If so, what is it’s name?”. I enjoyed filling them in and seeing what comments Sarah left for me.

With that done it was then time to do this blog which I have enjoyed typing very much, there may be alot of words but an experience like this cant be flattened down into a sentence or two.

So I think I’m now at the end of my blog, I guess I should tell you that I won’t miss getting up early every morning to catch the bus or I won’t miss signing in and out everytime I enter or leave the building..But I will miss Sarah, Helen, Kevin and Claire, I’ll miss the Museum Store and more importantly, I’ll miss the cakes and buscuits I was allowed to dig into! Can you say yum much!?