Work experience gives one an edge career-wise, enabling one to build necessary skills and knowledge and presents one as reliable. It equally helps one to make useful contacts for the future and sometimes leads to job offers. In today’s Nigeria, only people with relevant work experiences secure the good jobs in most cases.
I was captivated by the “get experience first before money” phrase when the thought came to me some time ago. Since then, I have been maximising every career-related job in sight. Albeit, my first time in Lagos when I was to do my industrial training, “am I in Lagos for money experience or for knowledge experience”? I soliloquised.
During our pre-IT mobilisation in school, I asked a group of friends which area of media they will like to work [print or broadcast media] as mass communication students. The response I got was in the negative as they opted for neither.
This is against the backdrop of some media houses that do not pay their IT students. What comes to my mind immediately is, “is it for experience or for money’s sake?” However, hoping for the best, by sheer providence, I got a placement at BusinessDay Media Limited.
When I got to the place what attracted me most was the environment; how neat it is, the receptionist later took me to the cheerful lady I work with in editorial online, although my purpose of coming to a print media organisation is to have a clear picture of what it all about having had a little experience of the broadcast media in my first year Industrial attachment.
I was so glad with the class of people I met there but my first week was boring and not particularly challenging. It was not stressful to me because I was working with all my heart. I really enjoyed my stay at BusinessDay because I learnt on the job and also honed my skills. It was a friendly work environment.
I was not perceived as an “ordinary IT student” and no one intimidated me. I wasn’t a paid intern but the stipends I received as a result of kind gestures from some staff surprisingly sufficed for me.
On a final note, I would like to advise those students planning their IT to be dutiful and creative in the discharge of their responsibilities as assigned by their superiors wherever they find themselves doing their IT. Set goals for yourself and strive to achieve them!
UGOCHI ELUWA
MASS COMM 300 level
Nekede Poly
