24th January 2020
- What key issues did you examine through your placement activities this week?
The first challenge I encountered on the very first day of placement was the lack of structure that I slowly realised I would be constantly managing. I am a very task orientated person, and upon arrival and within the first hour of orientation, it was made clear to me that the work I was to do was simply my own research about the company in my own time. I struggled with this as ACICIS has a work plan with specific tasks to be done each week to submit by the end of the first week that I was planning on following throughout the month. This means that I will be faced, each day, with not knowing what is expected of me and to ‘wing’ each day as it comes. This is something that I have been raised in Australia to not do – I have been conditioned to be task orientated and to be as organised in advance as possible. I think something else I am also going to struggle with, is coming to peace with the idea that this placement is only 4 weeks long, and in that time, all I can do is learn, I cannot make the kind of impact that I would love to make. I like to be very hands on, but it is not realistic or sustainable for Plan International to allow me to undertake any hands on tasks since I am only able to work with them for 20 days.
- How do the issues you have examined during your placement this week compare with those in your home country?
This particular challenge is unlike any I’ve experienced in Australia. All of the work placements and companies that I have worked for have been structured in a task orientated way. They have also been goal based in a way that means I am able to discuss what the company expects of me and create my own targets to achieve within reason. Plan International has specified that they have no targeted outputs for us and they just want us to learn whatever we want on the days that they can accommodate to us.
- What was your key learning outcome from this week’s placement activities?
My key learning outcome, based off the stated challenge above, will be to take more initiative and set out some professional key learnings about Plan International that I wish to learn about. This will allow me to do some research prior to speaking to the employees of Plan International. I will also have to critically work on my expectations and learn to just go with the flow as they are not task orientated. I think I will have to find comfort in not knowing what I might achieve each day and making the most of each day with the comfort of having task orientated goals. I will do this by openly communicating with my mentor at the start of each day, and searching for small tasks or my own research to do that I can organise in my own time.
As a conclusion to this blog, I want to take note of a quote in the article “Learning from others at work: communities of practice and informal learning” by David Boud and Heather Middleton who stated that “there is value in rendering learning visible so that it can be consciously deployed in enhancing work and the quality of work life”. I will take this quote with me into next week and actively take pride in the fact that I have the privilege to complete an internship at an incredible organisation and even though I will not be completing set tasks, I have the opportunity to learn about the organisation and their employees first hand.
Bibliography: Boud, D, Middleton, H 2003, “Learning from others at work: communities of practice and informal leaning”, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 15, No. 5, Pp. 194-202
Alexandra Hall 