Personally, Work experience was the main reason I chose to do transition year. In third year we are expected to choose our subjects for the leaving certificate. These subjects will then affect college courses available to us and also careers in the future. I had no idea what I wanted to study in college in third year and therefore felt incapable Of choosing subjects that could possibly affect the rest of my life then decided transition year was the only option for me. The idea of experiencing a work setting and sampling the work sounded very appealing to me.
For a while had my heart set on studying dentistry and becoming a dental nurse and when the time came to apply for work experience a dentists was on the top of my list. However as I began to imagine the different procedures I would witness that week felt queasy. I quickly withdrew my application. This became the first lesson work experience taught me. Then decided to go to my old primary school. Enjoyed every minute of my time there! I got so many chances to learn new skills and improve on skills already possess .
During the week I spoke to any classroom teachers, resource teachers and classroom assistants. Found primary school teaching really appealing as a career. Would never have known about my interest in primary school teaching if it wasn’t for the insight into it provided by work experience. Know have looked at courses that are suitable and I am aiming to study education with psychology. Work experience can be used wrongly by some students however; who chose to attend a place where they have no interest in and only believe it will be easy work and may have a chance of payment.
Work experience also takes students out of the classroom for 2 weeks of the school year. However I believe the positives outweigh the negative. Work experience in my opinion is the most valuable experience offered to transition year students’ strongly disagree with the opening statement “work experience in transition year is a waste of time” Work experience is time well spent in my opinion; it has given me career aspirations and more clarity on subjects to choose for my leaving certificate.