It's work experience time again. Gerry Jeffers, a former member of the Transition Year support unit, gives his top tips, and student David Flynn compares his two work placements.

To make work experience worthwhile, Gerry Jeffers recommends:

• Keep a daily diary detailing your experience, describing the way the company works, documenting new skills learned, and describing challenges and how you overcame them.

• Review your experience immediately while it's fresh in your mind. Is this a career you would like to pursue? What were the high and low points of the programme? What did you learn about yourself as a worker? Has the placement influenced your future plans?

• When you return to school, talk individually to a class tutor, careers guidance counsellor or work experience organiser about your experience. • • Write an account based on the diary you kept during the placement. Ask the employer for a report on your performance.

• If the placement has given you ideas for your career, talk to your careers guidance counsellor about further courses of study.

David Flynn, a student at Belvedere College, Dublin, questions whether work experience is inclusive enough:

• "My two work placements - in a primary school and in the offices of The Irish Times - could not have been more different. I enjoy working with children and I find writing (even in its most drab and formulaic form) to be very fulfilling. I hoped that through investing my time in these environments my interests in one or both fields would blossom and potentially direct me towards a future career.

"I thoroughly enjoyed assisting the children in the school. Many came from under-privileged backgrounds; however, their personalities shone through and I feel all parties benefited somewhat from my visit to the school. In The Irish Times I worked with journalists from different sections of the newspaper and enjoyed diverse experiences that ranged from attending EU meetings to attending the Dublin International Film Festival and talking to editors and writers on education, entertainment, health and politics.

As teaching and journalism are at opposite ends of the spectrum, I had two different experiences. Although the journalistic experience was more eclectic and flexible, it lacked the tranquillity that teaching had to offer. These placements gave me a small taste of what teaching and journalism are all about, but ultimately the relaxing workplace of a teacher nudged it ahead of journalism. In conjunction with this, teaching also offered greater freedom; while I would only be entering the core of my day as a journalist I would be finished teaching.

I feel that the work experience module may be beneficial to the high earners of society but that it doesn't benefit the lower classes. How many kids from the school I worked in will see fourth year? Why would they want to? Many of these kids aren't educated enough to attend college, nor do they receive parental support to seek tertiary education. Ultimately, work experience is likely only to assist a new batch of middle-class kids to become doctors and lawyers and, I believe, is not inclusive of the entire population.