Finding and applying for my placement…
When I was first told about the short work placement, I knew immediately I wanted to work in education, as I have previously worked in a primary school, and felt a placement in this area would help me build upon skills I already had a handle on. I was enthusiastic about the prospect of starting a new placement, as this seemed like a fantastic opportunity to gain experience and try something new. However, I was not ignorant to the fact that choosing a placement out of so many listed ones on Blackboard as well as the wealth of opportunities external to this was not going to be easy, so this was also a daunting prospect.
Initially, I struggled a lot to find a placement, as I felt I had to go the extra mile and find my own placement, and applying for one that was on Blackboard would somehow be a “cop-out”. I spent days compiling a list of companies that operated in the education industry and spent the following weeks contacting these companies to see if they offered placements to university students. Almost all of these companies came back to me with a resounding “no” for reasons varying from my availability being too little, all the way to the schools not wanting to take on any extra workers at the time of my application. This level of rejection was much greater than any rejection I had faced in previous job searches, which left me feeling incredibly frustrated and disheartened in my search, and what was initially a very exciting prospect to me had turned into a very stressful experience. The mounting rejection definitely took a toll on my enthusiasm and excitement about the placement. Unfortunately, these feelings made me prioritise other things I had going on at the time. I found the focus hard to get back for a little while, which led to things being left to the last minute.
It was about 3 weeks into my search for a placement that I really had a think about whether it was necessary for me to find my own placement. Once I let go of the notion that responding to one of the advertisements on Blackboard was ultimately a “handout”, I decided to have a look at the opportunities listed on Blackboard. I decided to look in the education folder first, as this is what I was interested in doing and where I thought I would benefit most. The advertisements in this folder were largely not particularly alluring to me, and while I would have been happy to do a placement I did not necessarily enjoy at this point, I came to the conclusion that I would best serve my employer if I was engaged in the work. I was definitely quite disheartened by the fact that I had looked through the entire section relating to what I wanted to do and found nothing that appealed to me. Again, this left me feeling quite pessimistic, as at this point it felt like I may never find what I was looking for.
I then decided to look through other folders as perhaps there were opportunities, I was neglecting due to my tunnel vision focus on education. I chose to look in the health and social care folder as I thought this may involve the education of children in some way, and it was in this folder that I found the placement I eventually went on to complete. The placement I ultimately chose was an office intern for a small charity, with the sole task being to create targeted social media content. Ultimately, I did find a placement that I really enjoyed, and I feel has taught me very useful skills that I likely would not have learned had I chosen an education placement as I first wanted.
Immediately after the search was over, I felt the search had actually gone very well, in the sense that I continued to persevere despite repeated rejection, frustration, and difficulty, and eventually found a placement and completed what I had set out to do. Now that I look back on the experience with a bit of emotional distance, I have realised I could have definitely improved upon my search in a number of ways. If I had the chance again, I would initially look at the advertisements given, before going blindly into a search external to this for placements. This is simply because I made the experience much more unpleasant and stressful for myself initially by not using this technique, and once I started looking through these, my search became much more efficient and beneficial. As well as this, I would try to be more time-conscious, as leaving things to the last minute left me feeling quite panicked and helpless, which ultimately made me far less effective in my search.
This experience certainly taught me to not close doors to opportunities on superficial grounds. This is because once I lost that tunnel vision mentality, I was actually able to look into new areas, and eventually find a placement that I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from. I also learned to accept help when it is given to me and not make things harder for myself, as once I looked on Blackboard, finding a placement did feel like a far less taxing experience. These are lessons I definitely feel will be useful to remember in future job searches but also in life as a whole.
