Making tea and if youíre lucky, perhaps writing the odd News in Brief? Students about to go on work placements might have higher expectations, as MA Magazine student Johanna Derry finds outÖ

I had only been in the office at Ink Publishing in Shoreditch, London for two and a half days, when the editor of WizzIt, the in-flight magazine for no-frills Polish airline WizzAir, wandered over and asked me if I would be willing to go to Poland.

This was an amazing opportunity. The airline had requested that the contract magazine run a feature on the region around Katowice, a heavily industrial city in south-west Poland. The editor, James Wallman, had a cycling theme for the May issue, to tie in with the Tour de France. So my brief? To find somewhere pretty near Katowice, take copious notes and write only 300 words about it. Oh yes, and do it all by bike.

Of course I agreed. It didnít matter that the last bike I owned was a Raleigh Princess when I was six years old (I loved that bikeÖ) or that if I take my left hand off the handlebars, I fall onto the road. I was going.

So only seven days into my work placement I was sitting in the boarding lounge at Luton Airport, armed with three Teach Yourself Polish CDs and a Lonely Planet guide, about to be sent on my first international reporting assignment.

Hansel and Gretel

The drive from Katowice airport was dank with factories and chimneys. The Pszczyna Forest comes as a shock. It is home to European Bison and elk, pine martens and deer, and the hotel I was staying in looked like something straight from Hansel and Gretel, set deep in the forest, on the banks of the Paprocany Lake.

The hotel staff had organised a packed itinerary for me and before lunch I had visited a bison reserve, seen three historic wooden churches and toured the local brewery.

After this came the cycling. To break me in gently I was taken on what is best described as an all-terrain route around the lake. I was slightly too short for the bike, which meant getting back on when I fell off, embarrassingly frequently, was a little problematic. This was solved the next day. The hotel found me a teenage boyís bike, which was perfect. It also meant I had to pedal twice as many times as my guide to keep up. We left before eight in the morning to cycle the 12 kilometres from the hotel to the Pszczyna Palace.

After a palace tour, my cycling buddy told me she had found a guide who would take us back ëa more interesting routeí. Seventeen kilometres later with burning thighs and an extreme case of saddle soreness, the guide told us she could go with us no further because we were ìleaving her jurisdictionî. Evidently we were only five kilometres away and it was a relatively straightforward route.

Which meant the moment she left us we got lost. Another ten kilometres later we made it back and I was wondering whether or not to write about the state of my bottom.

The next day I was back in London, back in the office, easing myself slowly down onto a chair to fill in the editor on my exploits. He immediately raised my word count, I wrote the article to deadline that day and it appears in print in the May issue of WizzIt.

All of which demonstrating that work placements need not be dull, but can offer the chance to do something unusual and creative, and most of all, get that all-important byline.

More info
MA Magazine Journalism
WizzIt Magazine
Ink Publishing

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