Life Experience

Walking into London wondering how my week of work experience will turn out reminds oneself of starting senior school or perhaps moving school. You’re wondering if the office bully will take you aside and administer a painful nipple cripple followed by an early morning bog wash in order to remove you of your lunch money. But the reality is you won’t be there long enough to be in any danger of the most arduous of office threats, politics. You will need to wait till your career starts before you experience the need to tread carefully on the long standing occupants of the office furniture. It’s actually a whistle stop tour so there’s no chance of rubbing up old man John the wrong way, instead your p and q’s enable you to avoid his dementia and bitterness to your life ahead.   

Sweet old Geraldine plies you with coffee and cake all week so you know nothing of the grave she’s freshly dug in her back garden for the body of her decomposing husband. You may in truth see some small cracks in the office infrastructure but you are distracted just long enough by the ample chested young secretary.

Taking all this on board there is no underestimating the value of on the job experience. It is now an essential part of any degree, giving the student hands on knowledge of their chosen subject. But is it a little late for this hands on experience?

With university fees going up we can argue about what side of the track you lie on but there is no doubting that the university strings need to be tightened and the design needs to be refined.

Teenagers finishing their A-Levels can sometimes lack the direction of a polar explorer and need navigating in the right direction. Careers advice from a bloated public servant is a little dated and third hand information does not inspire the mind of a lost youngster.

What is needed is a strong emphasis on work experience. Some students studying at university become disillusioned long before they will be receiving their degrees.

They have just spent two years studying teaching when they spend a week working in a school helping herd primary school kids and have now been scared by this experience. They have instead vowed to ride elephants around Thailand for a year.

We all need to make our own mistakes. The tattoo of the pope located near your nether regions did genuinely seem like a no brainer and the pint of blood you lent to the satanic cult in Rotherham might be sorely missed, at least you now know better for next time.

The truth is some of us take longer than others to ascertain what it is they want from life, it just seems with a little more focus on genuine life and work experience you might figure out what you want a little quicker.