TY Work Experience with the ISSU

This week I have been doing my TY work experience here in the ISSU. The week has be great. More interesting than I expected. On Monday my train to Connolly arrived early so I had the chance to stroll around the city. While queuing for coffee, a man asked if I was in college. This was one of the high points of my year because I am 5' 1" and I'm usually been mistaken for a 12 year old. When I arrived at the office on that first day I was greeted by Isobel. I was quickly given a desk and a laptop. The first task at hand was to write to schools asking them to join the union. When the letters were ready we made labels and swiftly packed them into envelopes. We continued to the post room to send them off. There the staff who work in the post room who are quite friendly and funny. After lunch I looked at the results of the recent project maths survey and began to write a report on the results, which were interesting to say the least. On Tuesday I started at 10 am as opposed to 10:30 am the previous day. The morning started off with finishing the report on project maths, which took until lunch. After my usual panini, I arrived back in the office. That afternoon I had the wonderful joy of working on excel all afternoon. Updating member lists and all that stuff. My previous experience with excel was limited so I was quite pleased when I didn't break it or delete important data. Wednesday was more fun. When I came in I was given access to the website and told to basically improve it in whatever way I saw fit. This was like being let lose in a sweet shop because I love computer programming. After breaking many things on the website and spending hours in a frustrated mess, it was finally lunch time. On Wednesdays it is office tradition to buy chips and chicken from the local chipper. I was all but happy to partake in this tradition. The storage room at the back of the office gets set up as a small dining room and the staff head back to enjoy the food. After the break and the laughs, it was time to return to work and back to the frustration of web development. Finally the day was over and I could go home and relax. Thursday was a fun day. In the morning I was updating power points and using every social media platform I had access to to try and get people to fill out the survey for the TY review.At 11 am there was a coffee morning. This consisted of a lot of women I didn't know trying to force me to eat cake. I think this could be one of the causes of the childhood obesity epidemic!  Around 12 pm Mark (Mr. President) called into the office. I knew Mark from CTYI so it was great to be able to catch up with an old friend. We went for lunch together and has a big rant about TY and teachers unions. In the afternoon Isobel we out of the office so I was left the task of calling all the schools we wrote to on Monday, asking if they received our letter. 6 out of 32 people answered. 3 of them turned out to be insurance companies, 1 garage, 1 person who thought I was an insurance company and the only school secretary that answered didn't open the post. With the list of calls made I was able to head home early and get the express train. Now it is Friday and it's hard to believe the week is almost over. The time flew by. Its been a great week and I have definitely learned a lot. I will be sad to leave today, knowing I won't be back. Every has been so nice to me over the past week and I really enjoyed it.Finally, to anybody interested in work experience here, go for it (click the contact button to enquire). It is a great place to do it and I promise you won't regret it. Yours Shauna