Last week here at the Estate Office we were joined by work experience student Madeleine. As part of her placement she has written up a blog of her week.
Getting work experience at Knebworth House has really helped me to prepare for the working world. After I applied, I was asked to come in for an interview – I was terrified. This being my first interview I was
extremely nervous, but I was soon told that they would love for me to join them for my work experience.
During my week at Knebworth House, I managed to do a wide variety of jobs enabling me to pick up a number of different skills. For example, I spent my first morning shadowing an educational workshop (Storysaurus Stomp) for primary school children. We took them around the gardens and through the dinosaur forest all the while teaching them about how to tell a story. I think this was a really great introduction to my week as I am quite comfortable with small children already, as I often help out in
Scouting, and the lovely weather that day made it even more enjoyable. I spent my afternoon shadowing guided tours of the house itself, learning a lot about its rich history and all the people who lived there. As someone who is particularly interested in history, I thought it was a wonderful opportunity and could not stop talking about all the things I had learned when I got home.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent my time in two different archives, first the Cobbold Trust and second the Knebworth House Archives. The other work experience student and I worked together on projects liked researching Sidney Cobbold’s death penny for his service in World War One, creating reports on other Cobbold family objects like photographs and books, and on Wednesday we went through Chryssie Cobbold’s debutante scrapbooks from 1958. These scrapbooks depicted the last season of the debutantes and gave us a wonderful insight into the life of the young Lady Cobbold, on which we wrote an article at the end of the day.
My Thursday morning was spent in education, creating prototypes and designing arts and crafts activities for the young children that will be coming to Knebworth House throughout the summer and my afternoon was spent working in the gift shop. On my last day, I spent my time in the estate office instead of marketing as (through no fault of their own) the internet went down. The staff’s quick thinking and adaptability has ensured that my work experience has been amazing even through mishaps like these. Over this week, I have truly enjoyed everything I have done. Out of everything, I was most nervous about working in the gift shop due to my anxiety, I have however felt supported by the staff at Knebworth House throughout the entire week and so my experience in the gift shop was not like what I was expecting. The member of staff I was shadowing talked me through everything, her patience and support meant that by the end of the day I was serving customers by myself without a second thought- something I didn’t think I could do.
This afternoon, I am being put back in the House and I cannot wait to see what they have in store for me!
