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Maxim goes Miles further

July, 2014

My name is Miles Atkinson, I’m 16 years old currently studying at The Skinners’ School and about to go into sixth form, having just finished my GCSEs. 

I came to Maxim after four weeks of extended sleep…

Arranging work

With school encouraging child labour, I was forced to find work experience for a week. I’ve got ideas on what I want to do, and as a career, but I haven’t settled on anything yet.

My Mum arranged everything due to me being a typical teenage boy, and therefore I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going into.

I visited a week before my work experience, just to have a look around and ask any questions before starting. I left feeling as clueless as I had gone in but at least I knew where I would be sitting. My Mum, a journalist, seemed far keener and even offered to swap jobs.

First day

The week went on and it was finally time to get up in the morning like a normal human being and catch the bus. Upon arriving, I was greeted by Andrew and a very helpful talk on PR. It finally cleared some things up and enabled me to begin my week at Maxim.

I was genuinely surprised when my first task was to draft a press release, I wasn’t sure how to tackle it, and I’d never written one before.

Rachel was really helpful and gave me all the information about the charity event I needed. It took me the whole morning to write, but by the end of it I was feeling much more confident about what PR involved.
The following day contained more grammatical torture, drafting another three dummy press releases. Phil was exceptionally constructive and explained everything I was doing wrong – I now understand the dos, and more importantly, the don’ts.

Birthday at Maxim

I feel like I aged a whole year on Wednesday – I came in and found an unexpected chocolate cake and a message on my monitor wishing me a happy 16th birthday. It was an interesting birthday – having to research anaerobic digestion for Phil, and MPs for Andrew.

After being set to write my last press release I was given my hardest task yet, by Erica, of writing a 400-word article. I was given till the end of the week to write it.

I slaved through the article on Thursday along with some proofreading and finally reached Friday.

What I thought about my week

My time at Maxim was really enjoyable, everyone was really friendly, and it has definitely put PR on the quest for possible career paths. I learned a lot of new techniques for writing too that will help me when it comes to A Level English this autumn.

posted in: public relations, students’ views,

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