Finding and applying for my short work placement

Originally the thought of finding and applying for a work placement filled me with dread, as applications and interviews are something I avoid at all costs. My career self-efficacy score had confirmed what I already knew, that I have very little idea about what I want to do in the future and am not confident about the skills and opportunities I will need in order to find myself a career.

Fortunately, when I attended the session at the start of the year explaining the short work placement unit and the types of things we could apply for they had invited some speakers from two organisations which offered the sort of placements we could apply for. One of these was from Reach Out UK, a charity which runs mentoring projects in cities in schools in which mentors are paired with a primary school or young secondary school student to build on their social and academic confidence. The projects meet weekly, and involve working through some maths and English worksheets, group activities and sports sessions.

To me this sounded really promising. Even though I have very little idea about what I want to do after I graduate and lack confidence in the sort of steps I should be taking in consideration of the future, I have been working with kids for years through babysitting and various school projects, so I knew this project would at least be something I would at least enjoy and find rewarding. That the project only required two hours commitment per week spanning across the whole academic year was also an advantage, as it meant I would be able to complete my placement hours and still easily balance the demands of all my university work and part-time job. I had the chance to speak with Reach Out’s representative and she told me about how she had found it so rewarding she was reapplying to do it the following year as a project leader, which gave me even more confidence that this was something that I would find fun and look forward to week to week as well as fulfilling the requirement for my unit.

The application process didn’t involve an interview or the submission of a CV and cover letter, two things that keep me up at night with anxiety, which further convinced me I was making the right choice applying to Reach Out. Admittedly, I went to the three hour training session expecting to be bored out of my mind, but the lady who was running it was engaging and the project had clear goals in mind in what they hoped we would achieve when we were paired with our mentees. I left the session ready to start my project with year seven girls at a local high school in a few weeks, and surprisingly I’m actually really looking forward to starting it considering how much the idea of a placement had filled me with dread when I first looked at the unit.

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