Work experience didn’t look like this in my day… at least not for me. I am reminded of that every summer when we host students here at Surrey Satellite for their work experience week.
For months I’ve been receiving placement requests from students – and some parents. The mails from the parents tend to be more frantic and pleading. I know how stressful it is to find a place. Most companies will ignore your approach. We try not to. But there are far fewer places than requests for them.
Many must rely on a berth provided by a sympathetic family friend… or parent. This is what happened to me.
In the late 80s my Dad worked at Tinsley Wire, a large steel manufacturer in Sheffield, and got me a place in the accounts department. I spent five days with reams of green-and-white dot matrix computer print outs. Lines of numbers. My job was to check for certain codes… and ring them with a pencil. Five… Whole… Days.
The boredom was off the scale. Even 15-year-old me knew it was a task of no importance or actual use, likely created to give the son of a sales director something to do. But I completed my placement, got the school off my back and realised that management accounting wasn’t for me. A useful lesson.
In this pic Hannah is talking to my colleague Louise about our lunar pathfinder satellite. I wonder what a pic of me in that accounts department would have looked like.
Probably for the best we didn’t capture it.
Andrew Greenhalgh 