For my first week of summer holidays, I thought I’d spend the time wisely and attempt to find some sort of work experience in an area I was interested in. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to search long after emailing a company and being accepted for a week’s experience in west London.
Hitting two birds with one stone, I planned to stay with my cousin in London for the week so I travelled by train to gain further experience in independence. Though the first day, my cousin helped me out with the different changes (as she coincidently got a similar route to work). Other than that, I took myself to and from work experience alone and felt pretty proud of it. At the beginning of the week I realised I’d never been on a complete train journey alone before, and realising I’d have to do this every day and meet certain train departure times, made me quite nervous. Of course, I was absolutely fine and needn’t worried, but the thought of all this ‘grown up stuff’ scared the hell out of me.
By day two, I was a natural London commuter. Getting out my copy of The Great Gatsby on every journey and beeping my oyster card in and out of stations felt like something I’d been doing since I was three. I even came close to having one of them ‘meets guy on train’ situations you see happen to the confident and independent protagonist in the movies. I was reading my book and I looked up to see a guy reading his book in the next seat area, then a few times we kept awkwardly *catching each other’s eyes. By came ‘close’, I mean it didn’t happen and by ‘catching eyes’, I was probably frightening him and had coco pops all down my front. But it felt like an adult moment nonetheless.
The work experience it’s self was incredible. I learnt a great deal about working environments and wrote a few things myself, which was really beneficial. Above all, I enjoyed myself. I’m not going to dabble into everything I did and where it was because not only will it sound like I’m bragging, but it’ll be boring to hear from me.
With the little time I had left after waking up early each morning plus commuting for a few hours a day, I tried to take advantage of having a week away from home (by mostly eating more peanut M&Ms in one week than I probably have in one whole year). One night my cousin and I went into the centre of London to the South Bank, one of my favourite areas of London, to walk around. We saw the neat little Festival of the World in honour of the Olympics, which is absolutely gorgeous, and I got a cookie and cream crêpe. Sure my cousin knew where to go, but being in London on a week night, eating a crêpe, knowing I had ‘work’ the next day made me feel a little more mature. Mature in the sense that I was experiencing things that I’ve never done alone or without assistance.
To top off a fabulous week, I saw The Dark Knight Rises with my cousin at a later showing than expected, so the adrenaline rush I gained from the very late night and early morning get up added to the complete insanity of Christopher Nolan’s farewell to Batman. In case anyone values my opinion, Rises is mental and beautiful at the same time and without a doubt the best ending to a film trilogy ever.
I’m not too sure where this post was aiming to go and I’m just as confused to how it’s ended, but I fancied something different for my blog. Basically, I feel more mature right now than I did 8 days ago and although it might not have changed me in a way that everyone else will notice, I notice it.
