As this is my first proper entry, I decided to start at the beginning with my first work experience placement.
It was a whole 11 months ago, when I was still young and didn't know the true horror that is GCSEs...
Anyway, it was two weeks in total- from July 1st to July 12th 2013. I completed 80 hours over 10 eight-hour days. I was working from 9 to 5 for the first time in my life.
I was in year 10 and the 'work experience co-ordinator' was part of my school. This increased the pressure of having to get work experience quickly. I was sending emails out to just about every company I came across in a frantic attempt to secure a placement. This wasn't fun.
Funnily enough, two of my friends found the placement I ended up at first, it was at Dulwich (horse) Riding School. This meant that we could all go together- which I loved. I do think that this was the best thing that could have happened at the time because all my many attempts at getting work experience were obviously not working. This was mostly because I was 14 and most veterinary placements only accept 16-year-olds and over.
Despite having my friends and lots of other people working in the Riding School, it was still a very demanding work-load. The number one thing that made it worthwhile were the animals. I loved the horses and I really got to know them individually. Two of my favourites were Beau-James (a beautiful mischievous young horse that didn't listen to anyone), and Lady (a pony who had been abused in her old home- making her very timid and untrustworthy, but she was better than before, now).
So that you know, saying I have 'favourites' doesn't necessarily mean that I dislike any other horses or ponies. On the contrary, in fact. I absolutely loved ALL of the animals (including a cat and guard-dog that I would play with whenever I could).
The actual work was hard but unexpectedly rewarding. It included a lot of sweeping, mucking out, weighing horse and dog food, laying straw, walking horses and ponies, assisting in riding lessons, cleaning and polishing equipment, grooming horses, washing horses (only happened once in the two weeks), and anything else we were told to do.
We also had to give the horses, ponies and dog their food and water (the cat ate mice so was only fed cat food occasionally). This was harder than it sounds because each horse had to have different amounts and types of food, some even had special dietary requirements. This made teamwork and good communication essential to being able to get anything done.
By far the worst job was sweeping. I know that you may be thinking, "But Sally, you had to muck out horses, isn't that so much worse?". You would be wrong there. Working with manure was relatively easy. All we had to do was muck out the horses and ponies, transport the manure via wheelbarrow to a manure pile and then shovel the manure from the manure pile into bin-bags. The manure would then be given away for free as a fertiliser. This was fairly simple because we had many people working on each part of the process, making it easy to complete relatively quickly.
In comparison, sweeping was a constant annoying battle against dirt. We had to sweep the ground so often it got tedious. It was the only job that I didn't even get any satisfaction in completing. But, looking back on it, I'm happy that I did do it. It was a great lesson in self-discipline and teamwork. I also had to take charge of the group at times and this helped me to think about how to get everyone organised and working in the most efficient way possible. This often involved having most people sweeping into the dirt into a pile, another one or two people shovelling it into a wheelbarrow and another person emptying out the wheelbarrow when needed.
The highlight of the two weeks was when we surprisingly got offered a free horse riding lesson. I jumped at the opportunity and I completely enjoyed it.
Overall, it was a very successful work experience placement that made me think a lot about many aspects of work that I had never before. It enabled me to learn about how to take orders, but also how to think quickly, independently and even lead a team when I need to.
This is a certificate of completion I got from my school for completing work experience:
(yes, my full name is written on it)
Thank you for reading. Bye people!
P.S. This entry was quite long, sorry guys! I'll try to keep them shorter in the future. I'll probably do daily blogs when I start more work experience.
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