I was lucky that I was given a placement by the second organisation I contacted, Fitness Running Magazine. I was less lucky that they were based in Peterborough and even less lucky when they moved their office to Kent. The editor, however, changed to work for a different magazine, Country Kitchens. He told me he knew people at Peterborough-based Athletics Weekly and could probably get me a week's placement there. Not only this, he also said I could stay in his house (I had been planning to commute from Sheffield).

I was lucky to escape Sheffield, as my train sped away from the rising flood waters. I say sped, it was more of a crawl. I was three and a half hours late for my first day of work experience. If this unlikely series of events occurs for you, call your employer and explain the situation.

Upon my arrival, late though it was, I was introduced to the five members of the Athletics Weekly team who worked at the office, and then to my large pile of proof-reading. After this, I was given instructions on how to use the Events Database. I became a slave to the technological and numerical demons of the database for the entirety of Tuesday. I never really believed them when they said "you'll need ICT in every career" but it's true! I later discovered that I had been given these simple, unchallenging tasks because Tuesday was press day, and press day was not the day for entertaining unqualified children, who are only in the office as a favour to a friend. My second piece of advice: do not annoy the boss.

On Wednesday I was rewarded for keeping out of people's hair when they were working to deadlines, with a tele-conference. This involves select people being given a telephone code to enter and joining a conference. The goal was for journalists from AW, The Times, The Daily Express and others to interview Craig Pickering and Jessica Ennis. I was the sole representative of AW to interview these top under-23 athletes who at the time were the favourites in their respective events to win at the U23 European Championships in Debrecen.

After this the journalists 'couldn't think of anything else for me to do so why don't I go and write an article about one of the athletes.' Aha! My time to shine had finally arrived. Rose's advice #3: Take every opportunity. I researched Jessica Ennis until I had compiled an impressive slice of her life story, and set to work on my article. AW loved it and it was printed the following week. After this they had a lot more faith in my skills. I was given more meaningful tasks and during the latter part of the week wrote two product reviews and two athlete histories. Both of the histories and one of the product reviews have now also been printed.

Having the articles printed gave me a great sense of achievement and I only wish I hadn't wasted the first two days typing numbers into a database. If you are thinking of a journalistic placement, my fourth piece of advice is: take something with you. It wouldn't have been difficult for me to have written something before I even stepped on the train, and then, perhaps I could have been writing instead of copying down telephone numbers.

My second week was at Sheffield Newspapers Ltd. I moved around different departments depending on what was going on in Sheffield. This was good, because I saw different areas of the industry and also had the chance to meet many different journalists and see their varying styles. However, my final piece of advice, #5, is this: stick to one placement. Although I was lucky that the perfect situation arose at AW, I certainly needed much more time to adjust to the style of Sheffield Newspapers. The articles I did write for the paper could not be printed because of their bias or unsuitable style.

My final words are for the budding journalists of this world, before you embark on your literary journey, ask yourself this: Do you want to do this because you want to pass information from A to B, or do you want to do this because you want to show the world how well you can write? Journalism is all about the former, and if there's one thing I learnt this week is that I wanted the latter. Do not think my placement was wasted though, I had a lot of fun and most importantly this experience may have stopped me from making a very big mistake.