Work Experience So Far…

Here I am, back from day two of my work experience. I was too tired yesterday to blog about it, and with the slight restrictions of not wanting to offend them by giving away important company secrets, I couldn’t think of anything I could blog about. Let’s see how this goes now.

Yesterday was pretty crap. All the work placement students had to be introduced and given a long and boring security talk, which lasted forever, and then I, and the two other people who got shoved into IT (they’re Chemists, eugh) were given a short tour by a lovely lady who is one of their supervisors. We were shown to our desks, introduced to a couple of people, and then their computers were set up. My computer, however, was not due to some technical mix up or something – good experience apparently – and my account won’t work until tomorrow. Joy.

My supervisor was also not in, and therefore could not set me work for the afternoon, though one of the other students who knew him assured me I’d like him, and that he was very funny. Both of them got set work on giving feedback on a database, and testing a new version of a program, but since I couldn’t really do much, I got given a seating plan to update manually. Which involved going around every single person in the office. It was not promising. Sidenote: There are good looking guys in IT!

Today, however, fared relatively better – although I realised that since the other two were mainly interested in Chemistry (and here’s me dropping it at the end of the year) most of our timetable had been filled with introductions, meetings and talks based around that, and the actual program and software-based stuff I was interested in was being pushed out a little. It started out well, with a meeting with my supervisor, who indeed turned out to be a very funny guy, whose Irish-Catholic background had apparently given him an extensive and colourful vocabulary of profanities. He talked to us about the software support network they had going, which was very interesting until he discovered the other two were into Chemistry and turned it into something possibly quite unrelated, I believe I stopped listening. We were shown around a bit more, I got told to do a Physics degree instead of “IT” (I have no intention of doing IT, Computer Science is far more interesting), and we gave feedback on some game being developed.

This afternoon we went over to another location, and got shown around every single Chemistry and Biology lab in the place, which made me decide once and for all that I would hate working in them and not to do Biochemistry at Uni. You could say that I found it both tiring and boring, until we got dumped in front of a TV which didn’t work, with a Wii which was locked in a drawer we didn’t have a key for, to wait at least half an hour for my supervisor to finish working and take us back. Let’s just say my skills in lock picking need to be developed a little. I think I owe them a few paperclips, too.

So, overall, although this week is going to be 50% not interesting for me, at least it’s helped me come to a decision. There is also hope for tomorrow – I get a computer that works, and am going to be working on some databases tomorrow – either my supervisor remembered my application form (where I applied for IT and NOT Chemistry) or he caught onto the subtle complaint I made (“so how are you finding it?” “oh my gosh there’s so much CHEMISTRY”), and engaged me in a geeky conversation on our way back. Well, a little, but the other two didn’t have a clue what we were on about. Side note 2: I’m sorry, but if you don’t yet know what Open Source Software is, even, then you shouldn’t be allowed to get work experience in an IT department. (We didn’t only talk about oss).

Tags: work, work experience