Follow the Dream: Work Experience with the WA Museum

Article | Updated 7 years ago

"A close up colour portrait shot of Jaimee Cockie." — **Caption: Follow the Dream work experience student Jaimee Cockie**
Image courtesy Jaimee Cockie

17 year old Jaimee Cockie spent a week with the Western Australian Museum on work experience.

Jaimee is from Hamilton Hill Senior High School and will graduate at the end of 2017. After three months volunteering in Fiji next year, she will be attending Murdoch University. This placement was set up through her Follow the Dream coordinator and careers teacher at school.

Follow the Dream is a program that provides after school tuition and mentoring support to aspirant Aboriginal secondary students in WA public schools. The program assists these students in achieving positive academic outcomes and meaningful post school destinations such as university, further training or employment.

“As a student at Hamilton Hill Senior High School I am proud to say that my days of work experience with the WA Museum team have been better than expected. In spending two days in Fremantle at the Maritime Museum with Donna and the Fremantle department, I feel very content in what I was fortunate enough to see and experience. As I am passionate about the events and tourism industry this was all beneficial to me as I got to see some of the processes and techniques it takes to organise an event.

For a 17 year old on work experience the word “meeting” generally sounds like a drag, but I quite liked it as I understood majority of the contexts in a meeting I sat in on with the Fremantle team. I got a tour of the submarine “Ovens” and got an insight of venues on the premises which were generally used for concerts and weddings. Starting off my work experience with the Fremantle team was great and set me up for the following days.

The following two days I was lucky to shadow Marlia from Learning & Creativity and from Fremantle I went on to meet some other great people in Welshpool. On the Welshpool site I got to meet Mr Brett Nannup and Moya Smith who were kind enough to show me some of many great Indigenous artefacts in which I was very pleased and appreciative. On my last day of work experience again I sat in on another meeting which was very much informative and I enjoyed listening to aspects of people’s ideas and thoughts regarding the New Museum and the Indigenous gallery space.

The WA Museum team were welcoming and just good people to be around, they made me feel great about the experience and I learnt something new every day. I have genuinely enjoyed every bit of this work experience as I got to meet some of the greatest people and got an insight of what my potential future career may be like”.

We would like to thank Jaimee for her wonderful enthusiasm and drive whilst spending time with the WA Museum. Her positive attitude was infectious and she was a delight to have around the office. We know that Jaimee will go on to be extremely successful in her future university studies and hope to see her face around again!