What they don’t tell you about your placement year

Brush up on those coffee making skills


Ah placement year. The year when you get a glimpse into how your life will be down the line. For all you eager second years’ applying for placement at the moment, be warned – working nine to five is not the way to make a living. Dolly lied. Placement year means no more partying during the week, no more lying in bed until a ridiculous hour and no more staring out the window for most of the day seeing who’s about and making up stories in your head about the people who walk by – or is that just me and my friends who do that?

Placement year is a good one, though it does make you realise how growing up is scary biscuits. In first year I drunkenly questioned my friends: “What is life, What is it?” Two years on, I still wonder.

Here’s what they don’t tell you about placement year.

Make the most of student life while you can

The best you can do right now is get written off and chunder abso-lute-ly-every-where. Find a party and stay until 7am and embrace that walk home in last night clothes. It’s called student life. The best kind of life anyone can have.

Once you’re on placement year you will be jealous of all your non-placement mates still living it up. Even if you love your placement. You’ll bounce out of your bed every morning at 7.33am (after three minutes of coming around) and be ready to take on the working day. But you’ll still be jealous anytime someone mentions going to Fly Monday’s.

But a cheeky night out here and there does no harm

You’re not just a coffee maker

Whenever you tell someone for the first time that you’re on placement they’ll most likely say: “So you’re the coffee maker”. But that is not the case. I made my manager a cup of coffee one day and it was literally so bad that I’m not allowed to make him any again. The trick is just be shit at making coffee and you’ll never be asked to do it again.

You’ll have lots of money

Even though placement year means no more partying during the week or lying around doing nothing – you soon learn to realise that there is so much more to be doing. Placement year means more dolla. You’ll be able to go on multiple holidays in the year and buy what you want when you want (meaning you can visit Primark more often). You couldn’t do that before.

Nothing beats a week out of the office, lying up and doing nothing somewhere in Europe

Your life depends on sticky notes

My placement job title is Marketing Assistant, a job which requires an extremely focused and organised person. To be that person you need sticky notes in your life. If a sticky note is lost, that could mean in my role that a venue isn’t booked for an event. 500 guests rocking up to a place that has no idea they are coming just because that sticky note fell down the back of my desk. That shit ain’t my fault, it’s because those notes aren’t sticky enough. But they’ll sure as hell make it feel like it’s your fault.

You’ll have an absolutely amazing time

You will have some pretty cool experiences with your placement year. It gives you a taste of what life will be like after you graduate without the stress of being in your final year. While placement can be scary, you know you have one more year left where you can be drunk at 1pm and it be perfectly acceptable.

Me and my marketing sidekicks with the Irish News Ulster All-Star team of 2015

I have run successful initiatives and organised the biggest events that happen within Northern Ireland. They are “Mum I made it” moments.  But I was brought back down to reality that I know shit all when I found myself arguing with my placement buddy about whether or not it was Martin McGuiness who had just come through the doors. It’s awkward when you have to sign people in to an event and they just expect you know who they are.

But you’re only 20. This time next year you’ll be hanging like a bat after a crazy refreshers week, questioning if you can party on before you start your dissertation. Who cares if you don’t know what Martin McGuinness looks like?