Work Experience: Day 5 [ 20/05/16 ]

Today I turned up to the university at around 1:30PM and I was initially going to turn up to the university around 12/1PM but due to transportation issues I arrived later than I expected. Though it doesn't affect my attendance as I didn't need to arrive to the university at a fixed time and I was involved in the following tasks throughout the day, some of which I set myself for a variety of activities to do:

• 3D Modelling - I worked on some of the Solent Creatives logo to which I'll hopefully have done by the time my exams are finished in early-June if the organisation would like to use it for their videos. I also worked on a recreation of the world-famous Flying Scotsman which I've been working on since late-February (You can see this on the Solent Creatives article which I wrote here).

• Work experience presentation - I have to work through a presentation with several different topics for Unit 22 which is the purpose of my work experience, to provide evidence towards the Unit with the work that I've done for Solent Creatives, I worked through a single slide and will be progressing through the presentation throughout the weekend to ensure its completion for mid-may as late-may is approaching.

There's not too much I could say with the 3 hours that I was at the university but however there is something that I can log from the day to show what I've gotten out of working at the university, followed by a summary of the work experience overall and the day.

Work Experience Log: Day 5

Self-management: 8 - For the short time that I was at the university I did manage myself consistently and with little illness left I've shown a significant improvement after 12/05/16 by getting myself back up to speed with where I left at. I showed this by remaining in the office instead of having to leave for occasional breaks due to my illness as I did on the previous Thursday and simply getting on with the tasks in hand and maintaining a mature behaviour like I normally would have in the office if I were there on the previous Friday.

Teamwork: Again, not much teamwork but that doesn't bother me at all as I was only there for a short period of time and I'm capable of working by myself, no huge tasks were to be progressed whilst I was there as well, leaving off the need for teamwork.

Participation: Participation during 20/05/16 would include communication with people at the office if they needed me and simply being there getting on with the tasks done as mentioned before.

Creativity: 7 - This improved as I was working with 3D modelling software once again with the 3D logo I was working on for Solent Creatives alongside one of my personal projects to pass time and show productivity. Creativity is required in this in terms of knowing what parts go where and what methods you have in mind for creating parts for models in 3D modelling.

Reflectiveness: 7 - With the short time in mind I wasn't too reflective but I could say I was consistently reflective throughout the time of being there with the 3D modelling and working through the work experience presentation with what I wanted to include in the presentation. Another thing I did whilst I was there was work on this post reflecting on what I did near the end of my time there.

Independence: 8 - Consistent independence working through tasks that I set myself and that I knew I should work on for the time I was at the office and no teamwork was done during my visit so I was very independent during my visit there.

Attendance: I was there from 1:30PM to 4:00PM and there was no fixed time to be there for so I wouldn't really give the attendance a rating and due to transportation problems as mentioned before I arrived at the university later than I intended to be there for.

Communication: 7 - I communicated to other people in the office to let them know I was feeling better as they were informed and knew that I wasn't feeling well on 12/05/16 and I also talked to Liam who had an interest in Mexican cinema and the film Amores Perros, a film that I'm studying at college.

Motivation: 8 - I believe that I had the same level of motivation to do work at the office like the other days that I've been in the office excluding the Thursday with my illness. I was keen to do any tasks that I knew I had to do and was happy to get on with whatever work that I felt like doing as there were no deadlines for the tasks I was given.

Summary: 20/05/16 and Work Experience

Short day but however I did enjoy it by being able to work in the office again after recovering from most of my illness and overall I really enjoyed my first time ever having work experience, going much better than I thought it would with people that I have absolutely no problems with and wouldn't mind working with again if I wanted to work for Solent Creatives in the future.

Working at Solent Creatives allowed me for the opportunity to publicise myself for what I do and for what my friends have also created alongside being able to publish two articles for Mainline Menswear, meaning that I already have two official publications under my name online as a journalist. I also got to work with new software and software that I currently use which was also an advantage of working there.

The people working at Solent Creatives were always friendly towards me as I was in return to them and I'm again glad to have gained some work experience which will allow me to write more about myself on my CV when I apply for a job in the future alongside the two publications that I have on me already again with thanks to the people at Solent Creatives.

I want to thank Solent Creatives for the numerous opportunities that I've been given alongside the good experience that I had working there and I'll remember to drop by the office to say hello (as promised) if I successfully come to the university in September, must I have gotten the points I need (to which I believe I can do as I've been working hard towards getting the points I need for my computer games course).

Work Experience: Day 4 [ 12/05/16 ]

This was initially supposed to be posted on Thursday though however I've managed to get through and almost fully recover from an illness as of 15/05/16 that developed starting from Wednesday. The illness may have been a cold/flu alongside my voice nearly going out and some slight hearing loss but that didn't stop me from communicating with other people in the workplace on Thursday and I tried as much as I could to stay in the entire day, leaving around 5-10 minutes before.

Fortunately now I'm in a good enough condition to go outside, ideal for the week ahead back at college; the illness has postponed my plans for work so I'll be putting some more of my own time into any assignments if necessary.

As a result of the illness I didn't turn up to work the following Friday but I'm happy to return for another day on 20/05/16 during the afternoon as I only have a double film studies lesson in the morning which ends at 10:25, allowing me to sign out from college to make my way to the university.

As usual I was involved with different tasks delegated to me within the workplace and these are the following tasks that I worked on:

• Solent Creatives: My blog post on video game development was finally posted on Thursday. Feel free to read it here: http://solentcreatives.co.uk/2016/05/12/game-development-experience-roblox/#.VzjVEvkrLIU 
• 3D Modelling: Solent Creatives wanted me to create a 3D version of their logo where they would accept either an exported video featuring the logo or a still image of the logo so they can feature it on their videos.
• Video editing: I didn't do much work on this due to my illness and I got a significant amount of editing done with case studies, I utilised the transitions which were offered and tried them on different videos to see what kind of effects I could put on the videos but I didn't keep them on there as I felt that transitions could've come at a later part of the video editing; had I shown up on Friday in good condition.

Work experience log ratings may be lower than the other days due to the illness I had, I wouldn't say that I was working as well as I was before the illness started to develop and below, as usual, you can find the scores I've given for myself and although maybe not accurate, it's a guess of where I'd be in these areas.

Work Experience Log: Day 4

Self-management: 4/5 - Unfortunately I didn't manage myself well with the illness in hand, I constantly had to go to the bathroom every few minutes and I wasn't feeling much in shape to work. The slight hearing loss made it less easy to hear people talking to me and whilst I could hear at the time, it wasn't as clear as before and now.

Teamwork: Teamwork was involved when deciding what I should do in regards to the tasks that I was doing for the day and I was coming up with ideas of what I could do with the 3D logo and getting feedback on what they wanted for the 3D logo.

Participation: I participated by doing as much as I could with the tasks being given to me and this also links back to what I said about ideas for the 3D logo that Solent Creatives suggested I could make for them.

Creativity: 7 - A lot of creativity went into the 3D logo as it's a long process recreating the logo on the software that I'm doing, it was about getting the right shaping for the logo and revisiting corrupted areas of the logo that I was recreating. I wouldn't say as much creativity as other days as I only mainly got on with the 3D logo.

Reflectiveness: 7 - I was consistently reflective, especially regarding my illness though however work-related, I was thinking whether I should stay at work or not, whether I was well enough or not to stay or if I was going to come in on Friday. I was also reflective when making the 3D logo ensuring that the shaping was right and making sure that parts weren't going to go corrupt like they did, finding my way around problems and solving them.

Independence: 6 - I was quite independent most of the time though however I was stopped from doing tasks as I had to go to the toilet to sort myself out whilst fighting my illness and should also definitely be improved on the day 5 post, when it comes.

Attendance: 10 - Again arrived around 3-5 minutes before my starting time to ensure I could get my stuff down and set up for the day.

Communication: 6 - Communication was good but could've been better, but due to my illness it was hard to communicate as my voice sounded as if it was going to go out and as mentioned in the beginning of the post, I had slight difficulty hearing other people due to my unclear hearing.

Motivation: 6 - My motivation dipped down here a bit only because of my illness, I found it struggling to get through the day but I didn't want to leave any work behind and was determined to stay in for the entire day. This will very hopefully improve once I revisit the university on the forthcoming Friday.

Summary

Would've been another good day if I was in good condition at the time but that doesn't mean it wasn't good, I did enjoy the day with the tasks I had to do as they were in an area of interest/experience. At the end of the day I didn't have much energy and went to sleep as soon as I got back and decided that it would be best to try and recover over the days as I wasn't in a good enough condition where I felt I could crack on with some work.

Work Experience: Day 3 [ 11/05/16 ]

More tasks follow with the work experience in hand and the tasks which I underwent and progressed throughout the day consist of the following in chronological order:

• Mainline Menswear: This is a clothing company which works with lots of clothing brands such as Nike and Adidas and I worked on two blog posts for them which regarded two subjects including what to wear to a job interview, discussing what to wear to an interview, what not to wear to an interview and general tips for a job interview. Also wearing slim fit jeans where I discussed the fit guide which basically outlines different types of slim jeans and how they look, how to wear the jeans and a brief history on the jeans. I'll also be having my first two official articles posted online for a real organisation with my name tagged along as author, something I never envisioned myself achieving.

• Solent Creatives: Today with the Solent Creatives blog post I was allowed access to their WordPress with an account made for me in order to publish my blog on my video game development, which is now posted on the Solent Creatives blog! (as of 12/05/16)

• Video editing: In terms of video editing I worked on seven different case studies which outline how Solent Creatives helped students start up their own businesses where they'd introduce themselves, discuss what their business is and the idea behind it, discuss how the unit helped them with understanding the world of business and then a thank you to Solent Creatives for the help that they've received. I spent the other half of my day cutting scenes from a variety of clips to ensure that the videos were good and the students didn't stutter or forget their sentences throughout their videos.

Again it was another enjoyable day with a variety of things to do and I've been informed that I've been a great contribution to Solent Creatives from the tasks that I've done. Oral communication also improved slightly as I was talking to more of the people around the office instead of and this is notable as my oral communication is one of my weaker skills which I'm trying to tackle and hopefully make a strength in the near future as it continues to improve like it has throughout the previous two years.

Some of the ratings below may remain as average because I believe that I've been maintaining the same level of these elements and there isn't much I believe I could do to improve it, I wouldn't want to rate myself a 10 as I know that I'm not absolutely amazing at everything but still moderately good. Teamwork and participation don't have ratings as I believe they're better justified in text instead of a number out of 10.

Work Experience Log: Day 3

Self-management: 8 - This rating remains as it is as I'm managing myself quite good in terms of what I need to do and I maintained the maturity which I've had all week and in any situation I find myself where I'm working and tackling a task.

Teamwork: Not much teamwork again but that's not a bad thing because it shows that I'm very independent and I understand the context of the tasks being given to me. Though I have worked with different people in the workplace by letting them know I was done with the tasks being given so I could seek advice on what I could do afterwards.

Participation: My participation in these projects has been great where I've regularly finished tasks and let people know if I need any help with tasks or what I need to do next which does link back to teamwork. I've participated well through finishing a load of tasks that Solent Creatives have gone through, giving a great contribution to the business whilst other people have other tasks to get on with.

Creativity: 8 - I maintained good creativity throughout the week as I also went the extra mile with a blog post on what to wear to an interview by including some general tips on how to make a successful interview (this wasn't included in the brief but I added this as an extra) all from the top of my head which I've learned at college, especially in Travel & Tourism where I had to practice a job interview and learn what would make a successful interview.

Reflectiveness: 8 - I showed strong reflectiveness from my views as video editing requires a lot of this, considering what scenes should play over someone talking and what video needs to go where and especially the duration of the scenes so they can match the detached audio.

What I mean by this is achieving something which I have achieved in my A2 Media Studies documentary where me and a friend named Tom (not to be mixed up with Tom at Solent Creatives) worked on a school documentary and whilst a teacher was discussing his views on the school, different scenes would play muted whilst the teacher's dialogue would act like a sort of voice over.

Independence: 8 - Again showing consistent independence in the workplace with some assistance needed and despite developing an illness today, it's not going to stop me working as consistently hard as I have been at the workplace. Today I created two 500 to 1,000 word blog posts for an official organisation and edited seven individual case studies of students explaining their experience with Solent Creatives.

Attendance: 10 - As usual I arrived at the workplace early so I could prepare and set myself up for the day ahead and I intend on maintaining this level of attendance throughout the rest of the week.

Communication: 8 - Oral communication improved by communication with more people in the office as mentioned before the log but I don't think I would give myself a higher rating as it was a slight improvement and I know that it's a weak area for me that's gradually improving, as also mentioned before.

Motivation: 9 - I continue to show a strong motivation for the tasks that are being given to me as they regard areas of interest such as creating media (e.g. blogs) for organisations and editing the case studies which I mentioned in the independence area. I've found that I always crack on with any tasks that I've been given towards completion but I do take a couple of breaks if it's quite time consuming and I've done this with video editing as it can be a very long process; it's not as easy as thought but if you were to get around the ropes of the software you'd be quite used to it like I am.

Summary

Another good day at Solent Creatives and I've had no issues during my experience there whatsoever. I also believe that this work experience helps me because I've been able to meet people at the university and talk to them which means that I'll recognise some people when I start in September and I won't feel as nervous when I go to meet new people in my computer games course.

Work Experience: Day 2 [ 10/05/16 ]

After completing a number of tasks during day one of work experience, I underwent some other tasks which were completed including the following:

• Solent Creatives: Blog post on my video game development completed and ready for publishing on 12/05/16 which is now available here!
• Video editing: Today I managed to get around the ropes of Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 where I spent most of the day cutting different scenes from interviews with students who had completed a unit with Solent Creatives involving running a business. This task will also run into tomorrow where I will be instead of combining different students' views into a single video, the videos will be put into different case studies so people can view individual students.

Alongside this I was also briefed on further tasks which I could do and the next task to be done after the video editing is writing up blog posts for Mainline Menswear JD as Solent Creatives work with them helping them with posts consisting of a variety of topics. Nearer to the end of the working day I got a tour around the university and I also found out that if I write up two posts for Mainline Menswear, I can get a bag filled with goodies (courtesy of Tom).

Again I'll be making a log of these elements for each day so you'll expect a similar layout and these posts may be published and online later than expected as I have revision to do for Media and Film Studies alongside working on a unit that this entire blog is dedicated to for Travel & Tourism.

Work Experience Log: Day 2

Self-management: 8 - I'd still rate it the same as day one because whilst there was some improvement on communication, I continued to maintain maturity and to adhere to tasks that I was being delegated at the workplace.

Teamwork: Not much I can pick up from with teamwork but that doesn't mean anything bad because I'm still hard at work and determined to do work, the only thing I can really pick up from teamwork was discussing ways of which my blog post can be published on the Solent Creatives website and how the video editing could be rearranged into different case studies.

Participation: For participation I think it just links back to my dedication to work at Solent Creatives; I was very pleased to hear that people were still discussing about my video game development blog post which was one of the first things I heard when I walked into the office in the morning. I think that I participate in Solent Creatives by assisting people with tasks that they might not have time to do whilst they get on with work that they need to do.

Creativity: 8 - I'm going to keep this at 8 for today as well because my creativity links to the blog post where I needed to publish pictures and I'd preview them here but I think they're better off revealed when the Solent Creatives blog post is published, something which may possibly be linked in day 3 of the work experience log.

Reflectiveness: 8 - I believe that I showed consistent reflectiveness today, especially in the video editing where it was all down to this as I had to consider what parts of the videos I was going to cut off, which ones were going to be used and which scenes were good to go. There were lots of bloopers throughout the videos to which doesn't surprise me as I've also had funny moments where things went wrong during my video projects in Film and Media Studies.

Independence: 8 - I think that I showed consistent independence and needed some guidance like yesterday in terms of what I had to do and I was always focused on the task in hand. I believe that I showed a lot of my independence with the video editing as I found my own way around getting the structure of the interview video/unit preview and with some suggestions made to how I can structure it again, I'd be willing to piece it up together to be better than before.

Attendance: 10 - Likewise with day one, I arrived at the workplace 5 minutes short of the start time as it's always a good thing to be early to be able to set up.

Communication: 8 - I'd say communication was slightly improved as I begun to interact with other people in the workplace as well when they had given me a task to do, such as Chris briefing me on the video editing and what I could do. Another way in which communication improve was that I also gave enquiries as soon as I could during the day if I had any for anyone.

Motivation: 9 - I don't believe that my motivation will decrease because this work experience is entirely new for me unlike other people in the class who are doing work experience who are a lot more confident than me, but I am determined to learn from this experience and see if my skills get any better as a result. Again, consistently motivated to do any tasks which I had handed to me and I spent most of the day getting around the ropes of Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and editing the videos.

Summary

Summarising the day, it was another great day as I had a variety of projects/tasks to do and I got to go around the university so I'm more familiar with the place when I very hopefully come to start my course in September. I'm looking forward to the tasks ahead and especially to having my video game development projects and experiences posted on the Solent Creatives blog.

Work Experience: Day 1 [ 09/05/16 ]

For the first day of work experience at Southampton Solent University I was first introduced to people also starting work at the university, where I was then briefed on what I was going to do throughout the week and the following bullet points outline what exactly I was briefed on in terms of working for the university:

• Solent Creatives: A blog post on the work which I have done in video game development with the recommendation of 500 to 1,000 words.
• Video game studio research project: I researched studios in the Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex areas and acquired information regarding name, address, telephone number and a short description of what they are and what they do.
• Video editing: Cutting scenes using a software which is quite new to me called Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and although I haven't gotten to much of this yet, I'm sure I'll be able to get around the ropes of the software and learn how to use it.

I believe that I worked quite well at the university today and I quite frankly enjoyed working there. I managed to get two of the briefed tasks done in the single day and begun working on the third task by learning about what the software I'm using has to offer to me. I had the option of reverting back to iMovie if I preferred that over Premiere Pro CS6 and two of the people who work at Solent Creatives said that I'd definitely be able to learn how to use the software.

In conjunction with this I'll be rating the areas covered in the introduction out of 10 alongside what I did in terms of the area highlighted and a justification for the rating.

Work Experience Log: Day 1

Self-management: 8 - I believed that I managed myself quite well though communication could've been improved. I maintained mature behaviour and always adhered to what I was asked to do e.g. Solent Creatives blog post, video game studio research etc.

Teamwork: ~

Participation: ~

Creativity: 8 - For creativity I demonstrated this in my Solent Creatives blog based on feedback that I got from the people who read the document I wrote the post in and people said that I had a great tone in my text and the grammar and punctuation was perfect. I demonstrated creativity by discussing a variety of topics in my video game development highlighting one of the biggest and longest projects which was a recreation of a plane made with 3D modelling.

Reflectiveness: 8 - I was very reflective throughout the day as I was thinking of ways I could improve my posture and to ensure that I could find every detail of research for the video game studio research and ensuring that there were no mistakes in my writing in both the blog post and the research.

Independence: 8 - I was very independent throughout the day though however I did seek help and offered my enquiries to Caroline who was responsible for delegating the tasks for me to do throughout the day/week. I maintained good independence throughout the day working through documentation and working on spreadsheets with little guidance needed.

Attendance: 10 - I arrived early to the job and ensured that I was able to start work on time.

Communication: 7 - Out of all of these elements I think communication could be improved as I mentioned in self-management, it's not something I'm best capable of and how I could improve this would be to ensure that I communicate more with other people in the workplace in the events that Caroline isn't around and something I always do with my communication is wait for a sensible time to ask instead of asking as soon as I need help, which can sometimes be time consuming. This will hopefully something I can work on throughout the week.

Motivation: 9 - I was highly motivated throughout the day to do work and this resulted in finishing two of three tasks which were to be done within the week in just a single day, showing how productive I was in the workplace and showing how motivated and determined I was to work, bearing in mind this is the first ever time I've done work experience which is something I will maintain throughout the week.

Well that covers about everything I know that happened today and teamwork and participation weren't given a rating as I haven't embarked on group projects as of yet, something which I believe that these two elements would be used in.

Summary

Summarising my first ever day of any form of work experience, I personally think it was a great day and it was a lot better than I expected it to be. I'm glad to have shown my achievements and dedication to working to people at the university which I'll be going to in September and there's not much I could say about it as it was all good. I enjoyed researching something which I have an interest in and was a pleasure to be able to write about my video game experience and showcase mine and other friends' projects.

Work Experience: Introduction

In this blog I will be posting daily updates on what my work experience is like at Southampton Solent University. This will also become a log for what I've achieved during my work experience in terms of the following:

• Self-management
• Teamwork
• Participation
• Creativity
• Reflectiveness
• Independence
• Attendance
• Communication
• Motivation

Southampton Solent University: Logo

The purpose of this work experience is that I will be able to gain work experience in the industry and that I'll be able to provide evidence for an entire unit in my BTEC Level 3 Travel and Tourism course which is dedicated to work experience. I will be working at the university for a week starting May 9th, explaining the title of the blog being 'May 2016', I decided to set up the blog early so I'm prepared for work experience and it'll also be less time consuming for me when I start. So far I know that I will be working in the film/media department which is beneficial to me because I've been doing Media Studies and Film Studies at college since September 2014 going through AS and now currently A2. In both subjects I've had experience with several different aspects which included the following:

• Making a music magazine
• Making a short film (During AS and A2 Film Studies)
• Making a short documentary with a double page spread and a newspaper advert to market it.
• Creating blogs and blog posts for the purpose of coursework.

With these aspects that I've done throughout almost two years this means that I've had experience with the following software:

• Blogger
• Adobe Photoshop CS5
• Adobe Fireworks CS5
• iMovie 09

In conjunction with this, I also have three objectives which consist of a personal, career and a curriculum objective listed below:

• Personal: I aim to develop more skills which would make me capable of working in the travel and tourism industry such as gaining confidence with customer service provision, interaction with other people and presenting myself to people through the use of body language, posture and tone of voice to create a positive representation of myself.

• Career: I aim to gain knowledge of what it's like in the working environment, especially in the travel and tourism industry so I'll know about who works there, what they do and how they contribute to making the organisation a better place for internal and external customers. I will be planning out what I would want to ask and make a good attempt at exploring the different roles that the organisation has to offer.

• Curriculum: I would want to ensure that I gather enough evidence from my work experience in order to secure a good grade in Unit 22 (for my Travel & Tourism course) overall and making sure I will have enough evidence for the further assignments throughout Unit 22. I also aim to plan what I want to find out, how I'm going to log information for each day (already achieved using Blogger) that I'm at the workplace and how the information I gather from the work experience would relate to my assignments in Unit 22.

Overall I believe that the work experience will be beneficial for me with the skills that I've gained from both of the courses which I do at college and as I'm a usually tech-savvy person I believe that this would also be the right placement for me as I hope to be able to get around the ropes with any software that I haven't used before during work experience.