14 year-old Eve from St George’s Academy has recently joined us on a work experience placement and wanted to share her thoughts on getting stuck in with Heritage Lincolnshire:
“Firstly, I have definitely enjoyed work experience at Heritage Lincolnshire. It’s a really good opportunity to do something generally completely out of a teenager’s comfort zone – I have personally gained quite a bit of confidence that I didn’t necessarily have before.
Work experience doesn’t just give you experience with the working world, it also gives you the confidence to speak to people you’ve never really spoken to before by getting you to face your fears; although 99.9% of the time there’s nothing at all to be nervous about. Heritage Lincolnshire is specifically good at getting this across because all of the staff are so welcoming and lovely and this made me feel as if I belonged there the whole time.
Secondly, I’ve had a great time because there’s never been a dull moment. All the activities I’ve been doing are so diverse and varied, so you don’t have to be into just one aspect to do work experience with Heritage Lincolnshire. Work experience with HTL involved several different activities; Archaeology (digging on an archaeological site in Holbeach), IT and security awareness training, sorting files, records and planning, blogging, finds washing, tree mapping and social media. Getting involved with day-to-day jobs has made me realise what this part of the working world is really like and I have discovered I’m really interested in it.
Before I started on Monday 8th February, I had no idea what to expect and that made me feel slightly nervous (which is completely natural). But as soon as I arrived I realised there was no need to be. As the week progressed I found myself enjoying it more and more, even if that means a load of back ache and neck ache from digging at Holbeach! My main tips for anyone doing work experience are as follows:
Don’t be afraid to ask questions, have fun and get stuck in! I can guarantee you’ll definitely benefit from it.”