What Work Experience did for me:

Actually it did whole lot of Nothing because I don't remember ever being 'placed' anywhere on Work Experience whilst at school. Either this subtle way of introducing unsuspecting teenagers into the hairy world of 'work' hadn't been invented when I was at school or I was off that day.
Once, at the school where I work, we had a very Bling girl who used to arrive wearing the latest high fashions which, inappropriately, included incredibly cropped, plunging tops and jeans tight enough to leave nothing to the imagination (we had a lot of visitors to our room that week). And she seemed to want to do everything splayed out on the floor. Everything was done from a crouching, leaning, bending-impossibly-over-at the-waist position. And always on the floor. Oh, we did TRY to tell her she'd probably be better of carrying out her tasks in a more elevated position LIKE NORMAL WORKING PEOPLE DO, SEE? - but she inisted she was fine where she was.'I prefer it like this'. Hmm.

This year we were blessed, yes, blessed, with the arrival of the Work Experience girl from Heaven. She was punctual, polite, amusing, intelligent, cheerful and willing to do absolutely anything we asked of her. Which was fortunate for me as I was in the middle of turning ten little girls into sunflowers, four lads into fighting trees and kitting out six flying monkeys with hats, wings and spears for our summer production of 'Oz'. Not to mention the cycloned house, the witch, the emerald city... you get the idea. So she was, in a word, an absolute Godsend (ok, that's two).
So at the end of our time together today I asked her what she'd learnt from her time with us and she smiled back 'I know how to laminate now'. OK. Not exactly the response I expected, but fair point. She does. And she can photocopy. And glue and cut stuff out and remove staples. She's also a bloody wiz (did you see what I did there?) at backstagery and organising costumes, especially getting the right child into the right one and on stage at the right time. Bless her, she never saw one scene from anywhere but behind the curtains and we never once asked her to make us a cup of tea/coffee (mainly because we don't have TIME to even fill the kettle up some days). I hope she got as much out of being with us as we did from having her there.

Thanks again, Becks. You done good!