Work Experience for Humanities Students: Exploring the Media, Arts and Publishing

As a humanities student, the sheer range of job options which open up with a university degree can seem both exciting and daunting. Choosing a career is a momentous, but usually not a momentary, decision. That’s why work experience is important: figuring out what field you might like to work in after university is a process whereby you discover what you hope to get out of a career. When trying to find work experience, it helps to identify what your interests are and whether you know anyone who works in a sector relating to those interests; for example, I know I want to do something involving writing and research, and this has guided me so far towards work experience in the media, the arts and publishing. I’m not one of those people who have always had a fixed career goal, but work experience has helped me to narrow down my options and begin to see what my priorities in a career might be.

What work experience in these fields has taught me is that the ethos of a workplace hugely affects what kind of focus the job will have, even if different fields involve similar skills. The media is all about the speed and scale of communications, whereas the culture sector operates in a more considered, future-orientated way.  For this reason, your personal temperament hugely impacts your suitability for a particular job: do you thrive in a pressurised environment?  Do you enjoy collaboration?  Would you rather focus deeply on one idea or more broadly across a range of ideas?  These are all questions which I asked myself after experiencing what it’s like working in the media and the arts.

The key to obtaining work experience is to be outgoing and enthusiastic: who can you contact?  The first proper work experience I did was one day’s research at a London art museum with the director’s assistant; I contacted a colleague of my parents via email asking if there were any tasks I might be able to help out with, and I was offered a day helping to sort press cuttings from a recent exhibition. One of the first things I noticed when I was there was the friendliness and positivity of everyone in the office: everyone evidently loved their job! It seemed to me that this was the most important lesson I could take from this snapshot of office life: dedication stems from enthusiasm, so following what you’re most interested in is a solid path to take.

After this experience, however, I was still undecided about which career path I really wanted to take. Working in a museum seemed appealing, since I loved art, but I was beginning to think that I would feel most fulfilled doing a job involving communication. After my GCSE year, I was realising that English was what I really wanted to study at university, and alongside this realisation came the growing certainty that I wanted to ‘work with words’. So, when I was offered some work experience at a television news channel by a family friend, it seemed like the perfect opportunity: the media revolves around communication!  As I entered the bustling office with its constant hum of people and screens, however, I was immediately struck by its fraught atmosphere. There was a constant sense of urgency, and whilst this was exciting – sitting in on news meetings, I felt like I was seeing the cutting edge of information! – it was also exhausting.  Many of the people I spoke to were mid-way through 12-hour shifts, and whilst they were upbeat about what they were doing, the atmosphere was one of frenetic energy. I realised that your personality type is just as important as your skillset when choosing a career, and that the atmosphere of a workplace is something which you can gauge only through first-hand experience.

So, weighing up the media and the arts, both had their appeal, but neither seemed like the ideal fit for me. I’m now in my second year at university and the prospect of entering the workplace looms closer, so in the past year I’ve thoroughly researched the different avenues available to Humanities students. University careers websites are useful for this: they’ll often list career options by course, and it was whilst looking through the Oxford English careers list that I first thought of publishing as an option which might unite my interests in the arts and communication. This time, I had to probe further to find a work experience host, but I eventually managed to set up some experience at a non-fiction publishing house. This time, both the workplace atmosphere and the nature of the tasks people were doing seemed to fit exactly with my interests, and I was able to undertake research during my week there which made me feel like I was really helping the company. Speaking to people in different departments, they all had the sheer enthusiasm which I find so essential in a place of work; it seemed that pathways of career progression were available, and the care everyone took in what they were doing was really inspiring. I finally felt like I’d found a career option which I would be willing to dedicate myself to.

This is all to say that choosing what you want to do is something you mustn’t rush in to; work experience helps you compare your expectations with the reality of different fields, helping you to understand fully the options available. This is especially important for people studying a humanities subject which isn’t as vocationally orientated as, say, medicine. Work experience gives you the opportunity to visualise yourself in various workplaces, helping you decide what really matters to you in a job. After all, they say that the hardest part of achieving any goal is actually deciding what that goal is, so if you can gain a clear idea of what you want to do, you’ve set your course to get there.

Minds Underground™ offer a work experience placement service, whereby we use our network of 700+ Oxbridge graduates, to host work experience discussion & application sessions and secure research placements for university applicants.