The first morning was pretty easy because I had no dress code, and as my mother is her own boss, I had no strict hours either. Also I didn’t have to be polite around my mother, so I could just be my self. I was sort of expecting it to be boring working with my mother but nothing could prepare me for what I did on my first day.
My first chore of the day was to fill, empty, sterilise and prepare bottles for other people. This wasn’t very challenging, so I got bored quickly. In the afternoon my mum noticed I was bored, so let me do the jobs she hates. Firstly, she made me sort out the bookshelves in her office. This included sorting out a 6ft long shelf full of catalogues, into alphabetical order and to date. The earliest being from 1992. After finishing that, she put my keyboard skills to good use by making me type out the register on the computer for four of her classes.
At the end of my first day I was disappointed for not having had a fun day. I also felt worried in case my whole week would be this boring.
The second day was a little bit more challenging. In the morning I had to draw pictures on a computer for my mother’s poster. This was irritating because nothing was perfect enough for her. She kept on making me change the smallest details, and I realised that day that she was the fussiest person I knew, but the finished product managed to satisfy her.
In the afternoon I worked with my mother’s friend, Mike Turner, who works in the Electro Microscopy Unit in the university. This is where they take pictures with really big powerful microscopes. At first I was quite shy because I’ve never met him before. I suppose I was expecting him to be a shy brainy man that wouldn’t really talk to me. On the contrary, he would not stop talking and make jokes. I felt like I could talk to him easy and that made me feel comfortable beeing there. He sat me down by one of the microscopes and made me look at bugs and flowers through it. This was different and I enjoyed it more than my mother’s office, although it got boring after a while sitting in front of a screen just looking at bugs.
On the third day, I met another of my mother’s friends, Guy Pitt. He is a photographer and developer in the university. I wasn’t that nervous because my older sister did the same for her work experience and told me he was the best man to work with, and he was by far the best person who looked after me that week because he thought about what I might like to do. He gave me an expensive camera and sent me around town to take photos of anything. I took pictures of Cardiff Castle and animals like birds and squirrels.
In the afternoon I met Mike Turner again and took pictures of cells with his microscope camera. Although he was enthusiastic about the cells I didn’t find them that interesting and just pretended to like the pictures I took.
The fourth day was the best day of the week. I was in Guy’s hands for the day. I met him in the morning and he gave me the camera with a new film and sent me to town again and told me to return at two o’clock. In town I met a lot of my friends and went shopping and took pictures of a burnt building that was in ruins. When I returned we changed the films into negatives in the dark room by using all sorts of chemicals, and let them dry for Friday.
On Friday, Guy and I changed the negatives into real pictures. He was very impressed with the pictures I took of the burnt building and asked if he could keep some. This made me feel good of my self and made me consider a career in photography, maybe sport photography. We finished by eleven o’clock so he gave me the afternoon off and I went home.
I enjoyed the experience despite having doubts about it at the beginning of the week. The best part of the week was working with Guy, he really made me think about my career.
