As an intern at BSC I’ve got work duties that repeat week after week. However, each day of the week brings new tasks. It’s now summer term at language schools — which means that there is a big influx of new arrivals every Monday. Because there is so much to do, it doesn’t feel like a routine (yet). There is rarely a moment where I haven’t got something to do. I can say I’m busy from 9 to 5 which is good because that’s when time flies. Every morning and in each break time, we have got many students coming into our office asking about changing their course, their accommodation and host family, taking a holiday, printing something and much more. I’ve now tried to break down the main duties I’m doing for each day of the week.

My weekly timetable roughly looks like this:

Monday –

• Welcome new arrivals, check and tick students on the arrivals list, take photocopies of students‘ passports/ID-cards/Visas, hand-out welcome packs, the ‚first day schedule‘, the ‚First Week Questionnaire‘ and ask them to fill in the information (such as emergency contact details, medical information etc.) and explain if the student understand what is written on the papers.

• Give a tour of the school for a group of students and show them around, explain where to find everything, explain door codes, how to read timetables, show them the assembly point.
• In the afternoon, create new students files on the computer, file and rename passport scans.
• Enter all data from the first week questionnaires on the school management software. Scan the all Questionnaires and create a new file for the scans on the computer.

Tuesday –

• Staff meeting: While the colleagues are having their meeting, my task is to take care of the reception, answer incoming calls, take notes and welcome visitors.
• Checking the Under 18s sign-in sheet: Underage students have to sign in before their classes and sign out before leaving the school on every day of the week. If a student hasn’t signed in and hasn’t called in sick, I’ll go into the class to check whether the student is attentand and simply forgot to sign in. To admit, I don’t like interrupting classes but unfortunately it’s something I have to do on a daily basis because they are always students that fail to remember. If the student isn’t in class, I’ll phone him/her and ask the reason for his/her absence. If I can’t get the student on the phone I’ll ring HostInternational, the provider of homestay accommodation. Then, I’ll ask them to phone the student’s host family to check if the student is home and feeling well. This procedures take a lot of time and can be annoying because in most cases the student is just too lazy to come to school or contact us.

• During breaks I work in „the shop“ – a room where bus tickets, trips & tours and stationary is sold. It’s also where the schools social activities are advertised and pinned-up. On my first day, the social activity leader explained to me that this was his last day and I will help out running the shop in break times until a new social activity leader is hired. I was told to just focus on selling stationary, bus tickets and booking bus tours. HOWEVER, while I was there, I had many students approaching me and asking me about the weekly social activities (obviously there were none!). I often got into awkward situations where I had to find a nice way to express that I’m just filling in the gap until a new social activity leader is hired and students reacted quite disappointed because they had been excited to join social activities that had been advertised by the school! I also felt a bit insecure when managing the till. I was surprised that I was trusted with handling money from the very first day. Working in the shop also meant giving information about bus routes, how to get from one place to another or recommend places to visit in and around Brighton. It was a bit odd for me, who just arrived a few days ago, to help people with that, since I was still learning about Brighton myself. Nevertheless, I managed to help students by simply using google maps!

• Creating leavers reports: Students that finish their courses have their ‚graduation‘ on Fridays. They’re given a certificate and a report about their language skills. My job is to prepare the leavers reports by filling in names and courses in the template and give them to the teachers who will then make their final evaluation.

Wednesday

• Check U18 sign-in sheet and chase students that haven’t signed-in.

• Work in the shop.
• Social media: Manage the schools Facebook and Instagram Account

• Prepare leavers questionnaires: create a questionnaire for every student that leaves on Friday, print out and give them the teachers.

• Chase students that haven’t filled in the first week questionnaire. It happens that students handwriting is unreadable and therefore, phone numbers and e-mail addresses won’t work. I have to chase the student during break times to get the necessary information.

Thursday

• Prepare envelopes for certificates and print name stickers
• create and print certificates and check course start and end date, language level and let the school director sign them
• Social media: Manage the schools Facebook and Instagram Account

Friday

• Check U18 Sign-in sheet
• preparing everything for Monday: print out all first day documents, prepare information packs
• Create a new U18 Sign-In Sheet with the help of the new arrivals list and identify the underage students
• Graduation time: With the school director, take all the graduate envelopes to the garden and take photos of each student that is given their certificate!
• Check attendance: take all teachers‘ course files (about 30!) and enter the data on the school software
• pin-up the new timetables throughout the school