It’s certainly easier to laugh at a situation in hindsight rather than in the moment

Trust me, there was no laughing during my one month adult-life boot camp. Unlike with free trial Photoshop, I was certainly grateful when the thirty-day period was up.

Before imparting my woes, I feel like some back-story is needed. Magically travel back in time to early April and you will find a wide-eyed, optimistic version of my current self, applying for work experience and finding the ideal placement: a famous art auction house in London, declaring prompt replies to an application. It was too good to be true.

Indeed, it really was too good, and not so true. For the next few months I grew very fond of the customer service receptionist. This was hardly surprising, considering that I spoke to them twice a week in an attempt to reach HR and find out what had happened to my forever-pending application. Every single time they were "out of office". I was quickly served a plateful of excuses: they were either on a lunch break that technically started before noon and ended at 3pm, suffering from flu, at a very important meeting, or just not picking up the phone. At one point the woman on the phone felt so sorry for me she had to ask if I didn’t have anything better to do in my Cambridge-student day. Told you we got friendly.

A few weeks before the end of Easter term, I cracked through to the HR department. Hallelujah! Oh no…wait…what? You didn’t get my CV? How is that possible? I see it right here on the portal, attached on 10th April. Yes, right, I see, but if that’s the case and there was a "technical glitch", could I not have been notified earlier, or at least have my emails (note the plural) replied to? These are all accurate snippets from my conversation with the work experience coordinator who clearly cannot do her job... so why is she trying to assist in finding other people's?

Morale was down. This fantasy I had had of the perfect two weeks in an art auction house was crumbling, much like my will to live if I was going to be spending the next three months doing couch yoga.  Cue a slightly tearful call home and my dad’s promise to find something. That he did, bless him, but it really was no better than couch yoga, and certainly not as relaxing, either.

What I did for a month was, on paper, ideal: marketing and social media work in the hotel industry. What I actually got was 28 days of agony, a numb bum from sitting down for seven hours at a time, boredom, bronchitis from the office air conditioner and a hole in my bank account for the two-hour return commute, changing between three forms of transport in 36 degree heat. I’m not even bitter about it anymore. I’ve grown. But before that, I sank.

For a while, I was unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel of unpaid work researching outdoor artists (is that even a thing?) and packed lunches. On top of everything, I’m allergic to coffee and so I couldn’t even join the coffee break club that met up in the common room every hour or so and chatted about gardening, their children’s schools and office gossip. Talk about a fish out of water. During this time I should have been sponsored by WhatsApp, my only means of communicating with the outside world, which was evidently enjoying free time, sunshine and copious amounts of sleep – something which I was thoroughly deprived of. Oh, and another thing: nothing will give you social anxiety like finding yourself with no work to do, sitting around pretending to be busy until 6pm, because leaving even a second before everyone else would make you feel like a pathetic excuse for an intern.

Even now, weeks after the shackles of the work experience contract have been removed, I’m struggling to get any kind of feedback from the team I was working with to add to my CV. Isn’t it lovely when you have zilch, nada, nothing to show for a month of neon-light-induced dark circles under your eyes?

In any case, my mother always says that no matter how awful the experience, there is always a conclusion to be drawn and something to be learnt. Well, dear reader, here it is: contrary to popular belief, being a Cambridge student doesn’t guarantee you the most life-changing work experience placement, so brace yourself for the sad, sad world of work outside CB2.