When we hear the term work placement a multitude of emotions and thoughts come with it. A sense of pressure to do a good job, anxiety to make a good impression, overwhelmed to find the time for the workload, whilst also being excited and relived. Excited because you don’t know what to expect of the new taking and relieved because the future that you want, feels out of your grasp and any work experience gained brings you that inch closer to the impossible. I proved myself right when I started my placement at Edinburgh Literary Salon, experiencing every emotional process I had expected from the placement. However, I was also faced with a whole new store of challenges.
To better explain I will start with a brief overview of my role. I was given the opportunity for the placement by my university Edinburgh Napier, and the first meeting consisted of me and my fellow students, our degree leader and two members of the Salon. The first meeting was very relaxed, we were given submissions to read and we simply shared our opinions. The task of the placement was similar to that of a group assessment, we were given a goal and a team to work together to achieve it. The final goal in this instance was to take the submissions provided to us, edit them and work with the authors, then design an anthology with all the submissions perfected in an order and with a design of our choosing, for a specific printing date. Then we need to follow that up with an event and marketing of the anthology. A big task, with a lot of different responsibilities and cogs to work together. As I said it resembled a group assignment in that we all divided our responsibilities and agreed amongst ourselves for deadlines and when to meet either remotely or in person. However, this wasn’t a university assignment, the anthology we created was real, the authors we worked with hard working and proud of their work and the Salon a respectable establishment. This is where the new challenges came.
When you step into a company at the bottom of the ladder you’re surrounded by people who have the answers to your questions, who have done the job you are trying to do, been on the roller coaster you’re on. Even if it is a small taking, when you’re at the bottom every person you look around to can offer their help, can offer their guidance. This placement, the blind lead the blind. Don’t misunderstand me, my module leader and the Salon itself was a great help, always offering any guidance we either needed or asked for. But when surrounded by my peers, all with roughly the same level of education and work experience, I had to ask myself…
if my fellow students can do it, I should be capable, right?
The ways I answered this question became what I value as the most important lesson learned on the placement. This question begins as self-doubt, which also caused the first challenge I struggled with. As I held an editorial role, I was responsible for correcting hard working authors work and relaying to them any improvements I would recommend. Any observation on grammar, punctuation, spelling, I found easy. Knowing something was spelt wrong was a clear observation that I felt confident in relaying. But telling an author there was an error in their content, suggesting they change something they clearly put a lot of time into, felt daunting. Who was I to say they’re wrong, and my understanding of what a story needs is better than theirs? Thankfully, before we were to contact the authors, we all had to have one on one meetings with fellow students, who were tasked with being secondary editors of the work we were fretting over. From those meetings I learnt the first answer to my question, ‘if my fellow students can do it, I should be capable, right?’ I found that yes my peers could edit the work like myself, but a lot of them also shared the same doubt I had. Having them relate to my fears made me realise I was not inferior or failing, but just experiencing a necessary step in going from student to staff. Having another person agree with me not only in sharing my fears, but agreeing with my ideas allowed me to feel validated in my opinions and confident in my next step of contacting the authors.
Overall, for me having a placement with other students forced me to work independently instead of taking direction from my superiors, I learnt a valuable lesson to be more confident in new challenges, but also that it is okay to get help when taking that step. When faced with a challenge me and all others had self-doubts we needed to push through. This will also be true when I am no longer secure as a student, I know that even when I am not surrounded by peers, those that surround me also too had to climb that first step and if needed I know they’re there to help me up.
MSc Publishing – Industry Accredited Postgraduate Degree 