My Work Experience Week I travelled to France for my work experience to improve my French whilst gaining some valuable experience in the world of work. I left for France from Portsmouth on Friday arriving early on the Saturday morning. I had an enjoyable weekend; getting to know my host family, speaking French, and having a welcome break from schoolwork. I commenced working on Monday morning at 8 am on Monday morning. I was working at a French factory called Ty Nad that produced crepes, gallettes and other goods for resale on a large scale in all parts of France. On arrival, I was introduced to Nadine Nad an, my supervisor and manager of Ty Nad.
She was very understanding regarding my level of fluency in French, and spoke slowly so that I could understand. I was then handed over to one of the staff to allocate me a job for the week. I was placed with another French work experience student in the folding and packaging department. I spent the entire morning folding gallettes and placing them in plastic bags, dating them and sticking labels on to the packets.
I found the job extremely good in some respects in that it wasnt particularly complex and therefore I was able to talk French with the other workers whilst working and I was therefore able to improve my French whilst doing a job that didnt tax me mentally. However, after several hours of folding crepes, I began to find the job a little monotonous and boring, I also found that repeating the same action repeatedly over and over again made my arms and backache. However, there was a positive side to the job as at lunchtime the factory closed and therefore I had the majority of the afternoon after a short break for lunch to do as I pleased. I used this time for reading and catching up with school wor that I hadnt had time to finish during the term. I spent the week in similar fashion, my allocated job each day was either to fold crepes of gallettes or else to package piles that had already been folded. By the end of the week, I was thoroughly bored of the work as I found that despite my initial enthusiasm for helping, five days of hard work with no pay was pushing the limits of tolerance.
However, I have learned two exceedingly valuable lessons from my work experience. Firstly, I have decided that I will never work in a factory, doing a dead-end job with few prospects getting paid very little for back breaking monotonous work. This is a valuable lesson that I will carry with me through life. Secondly, that my French is not good enough to be able to communicate freely with native French people, and I have now resolved to work at my French so that by the end of the next two years I shall be able to communicate freely with any French speaker.