Work experience

On the 16th of September 2019, I started work experience. Work experience is essentially a week or two given to upper high school students where they go out into the workforce and observe any particular job of their choosing. I have always been interested in childcare or teaching as a job, so, for work experience I decided to assist at a local preschool.

For some, work experience makes them decide exactly how they want to work for there rest of their lives, however others, find out that there 'dream job' is not for them. During the week of childcare work I did, I had many ups and downs that fluctuated my opinions on how I want to spend my future.

My first realisation was that there is a lot more children in the daycares than I expected. Before coming into the week I had imagined that roughly 20 kids would be in each class, however I was far off, with nearly 40 kids being booked to come in each day. This meant that each teacher had to be prepared to keep watch on many kids at a time. I learnt through this realisation that childcare takes more work than I originally thought, still, it doesn't dismay me from my dream of childcare.

Another realisation that I had was that the hours of childcare are longer than the hours I currently spend at school. If I was to work in the childcare industry I would have to adjust my life and schedule to fit longer work hours with shorter lunch breaks. This is probably the thing that mostly dismayed me from my vision of childcare in the future.

I had fun during my week of child care. Conecting with the children made me happy, which is why I wanted to see what it was like to work with them in the first place, and I think the experience made it a very realistic possibility for my future career.

I believe that being given the opportunity to see what a future would be like in ones chosen career is a really great way to get teenagers excited about their future. It also helps people to know what subjects would help them achieve that goal so they don't waste their school time doing subjects that won't help them get into the job they love.