Before my work experience I thought that working in a nursery would not be particularly enjoyable.

James Noton 11G

WORK EXPERIENCE COURSEWORK

Before my work experience I thought that working in a nursery would not be particularly enjoyable. I felt slightly apprehensive, as I had never done anything similar before. I envisaged doing a significant amount of work and thought I would be stuck there sweeping up amongst the boisterous pre-school children.

As I was approaching the nursery at first I thought I had come to the wrong place; the building looked like a run-down Victorian piece of architecture. A striking scarlet door stood at the top of the steps and vivid stained-glass windows covered the nursery walls. As I got closer, however, I soon heard shouting and bawling which confirmed my beliefs and reassured me to some extent. I walked up to the door to ring the doorbell. A plump fair-haired lady appeared before long and introduced me to the environment that I would be working in. I immediately found that some things were how I expected them to be: an annoying whine ran through my ears and a musty stench infested my nose. The place was somewhat petite and markedly warm.

In due course I was asked to do odd jobs that I found hard to get excited about. For example I was sometimes told to stick the children’s artwork in their scrapbooks or on the walls to create displays. I also had the chance to use a computer to word process name labels.

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One of the reasons why I chose to go to the nursery was because it was so close to home. I departed from my house at 8:58 and arrived bang on 9:00. While I was at the nursery I enjoyed impressing my supervisor with my I.T skills, as she was useless with computers. I had a great deal more independence at the nursery than I have at school, which is another positive aspect of work experience.

Conversely, there were bad aspects of the work experience. On one occasion I found myself using glue to stick work in books. I very unluckily managed to knock the glue pot over so that glue ended up all over the carpet. Fortunately I cleaned up the mess before anyone noticed. Additionally, the hours of work were a little longer than school hours. In the end work experience was probably more tiring, taking into account that I was hassled by hoards of aggressive, brutal youngsters each day.

My impressions changed over the two weeks. My confidence grew as I got used to the routine and got to know the staff and children. Before I started the work experience I thought that it would be exceptionally hard work, but in reality it wasn’t as stretching as I considered it to be. Towards the end of the work experience I started to get extremely irritated by some of the pre-school children. I made acquaintances with some of the boys, Cameron and Joseph to name a few. They were all reasonably mischievous and seemed to wear the same black Velcro trainers. The girls, on the other hand, all wore bright dresses and smelt of something unpleasant. Every day boys and girls chased me around the garden, attacking me whenever they got the chance. I don’t think I would have lasted longer than two weeks, as they would have grated on my nerves more and more.

Although I had enjoyment on my work experience I don’t think I would ever go into this line of work. This is mainly due to the fact that after a couple of months I would be sick to death of the infuriating, maddening pre-school children. Also it could sometimes get rather tiresome and tedious; I repeatedly found myself standing around simply watching.