Having been in full time education for the past 11 years, the only ‘experience’ I’ve ever had of an office environment was peering through the windows of a broadband agency in town and seeing the dark, grey room filled with rows upon rows of computers, behind which sat a multitude of tired, bored looking workers despondently bashing away at their keyboards. And since then my impression of an office job is that it is a dreary profession.

However, after walking in to the office here at MK just a day ago at the start of my work experience placement I can happily admit that I was wrong about what I thought working in an office would be like.

Not all offices are dark and dull as I once perceived them to be. Instead they can be cheerful and exciting, as I type I am surrounded by colourful posters, vases of flowers and the quiet sound of Take That’s ‘Greatest Day’ playing through the radio – making the room friendly and the complete polar opposite of bleak.

People weren’t sat at computers aimlessly prodding letters on their keyboards, but rather they appeared hugely interested in the task at hand, stopping every once in a while to share with the office the latest interesting news story they’d read online, which was often met with a ripple of laughter going through the room. It could not be more different to what I had thought previously and I gladly replaced the dingy and wearisome image I had in my head with a bright and enlivening one.

Like many of my friends also doing work experience scattered in offices all over Sheffield, I was apprehensive about what was to come, however any fears and nerves that I had were immediately dismissed after seeing the smiling faces of the people I would be spending the week with. My preconceptions of office jobs quickly turned into misconceptions and a job type that I once put aside into the ‘not for me’ category is now one that I am strongly considering as a future career.