Sue's Family, Flowers and Fun Stuff: Floristry Course Week 9

A long one, not much floristry but lots of wasting time and the outcome to my complaint!

This week was enrichment week - the purpose of the week is to enhance our studies by adding complementary areas to our learning- - as expected it didn't really work out like that.

We were supposed to have a florist come in and talk to us, didn't happen, we should have gone on a visit to the local wholesaler - didn't happen.

So what were we offered?

Monday - a session with a CV professional - but in a whole group wasn't really going to work as these things are better done one to one to really gain anything (and we have already submitted our CV's for part of an assignment and for our work placements - so really a bit late? - I think so!!)

Tuesday - how to care for your hands from the beauty department at college - not really my thing, having someone else in the class massage cream into my hands - no thanks (not that I have anything against any of them but I'm there to learn! and if I want my hands and nails done well I head off to Mirror Mirror who do a cracking good job everytime I have had them done!!)

So I had a couple of extra days off and got on with other stuff, cleaning the house, working on assignments etc.

Wednesday I was really looking forward to the session as it was going to be how to photograph our work for a portfolio, a bit late as we are well into the second half of the course, but I guess better late than never. So I headed off to college at the allotted time, which turned out to be over an hour earlier as the tutor had changed the time and not let me know, although she had let some of the others know (now that wouldn't be anything to do with the fact that I was to have a meeting with her following the class regarding my work placement!! or am I just being cynical?)

Anyway the session was interesting but only just - it turned out the person giving the talk (and credit to him he did it voluntarily) was one of the night time part time floristry students, so yes we picked up a few tips but it wasn't quite what I was expecting.

So at a time when we so desperately need to be getting on with our work we wasted a whole week doing nothing at all! Enrichment it certainly wasn't.

So after that I popped downstairs to collect Hannah and headed off to the meeting with my tutor and her boss, it lasted far too long, they talked a whole heap of nothing but I made them sit and listen to all of my complaints about what had happened regarding my potential work placement - it made uncomfortable listening for them and they deserved it.

And the outcome - well are they going to send out different letters for part time and full time students - No - so the situation will arise again!

Are they bothered that a work placement only wants to treat one of their students as a skivvy - No.

Are they bothered that they are trying to commit students to excessive work placement commitments without option - No.

Apparently they would be able to get me a work placement starting at some time during May (date not specified!) so this is the May just before the course end in June! The May when I have:-

4th May - window display - all the prep and follow up assignment from that
18th May - in-store display - all the prep and follow up assignment from that

Planted design in situ and maintenance/assignment work for that ongoing

Whatever assessments will be happening during May and as we stand now that is likely to be quite a lot and 3 written assignments which come off the back of the work placement as well as the 40 hours themselves.

The outcome of the meeting, well they acknowledged the placement I got was not suitable for me, but it might be for someone else - give me strength!! A complete waste of time and clearly a complete cop out as the college really just do not care!

I of course did have a little trump card up my sleeve, as a placement in May is out of the question, way too late for anyone on the course and they really should know that, my trump card - I have sorted out my own work placement and I was starting it the day after my meeting with them!

Did I tell them about it - No, I bloody did not, let them stew over my response!!

And my second area of complaint the time left and the amount of outstanding work left which is below and taken out of my document - and basically at this point I've done 8 assessments/assignments and 29 are still to be done!! There were also masses of range items still to be covered and one or two which were missed during the course - a vast amount of work to be completed!

And there response well I'd been off on an assessment day so that was why there was so much outstanding - doh - it is an incredibly silly response - bloody hell and I thought I was only doing a couple of assessments that day - wow I hadn't realised we were going to cover so much!! I will come back to this one in my final assessment of the course, but the whole timetabling is very bad, the tutor will not go over things if you miss it she gets other students to show you, or you have to press her to find out, and the course is just very badly organised.

We are now in a position where we are jumping backwards and forwards between units and never really know from day to day what we should be doing.

I got four assignments back at the end of the meeting too, all are Distinctions pending some very minor amendments such as changing the word bump to complementary spray and rather than spraying the flowers when the design is completed I should have written selectively mist, so when I have made those amendments I will have 4 Distinctions to add to my results!

I would perhaps think when you read criticisms of a course that maybe the student isn't doing well and it is moaning for that reason but no - I'm doing pretty well and these are genuine concerns which the college is quite happy to answer by not answering them.

So no college floristry this week, but here are some photos from my work placement which I started on Thursday, two days prior to Mother's Day and boy was the shop busy. It was fun, informative, and very tiring. Below is a funeral arrangement on of the staff did and pretty amazing compared to the stuff we do at college.

I spent the day doing some hand tied arrangements and here are some of mine, well not quite as I was replacing some damaged flowers and then aqua-packing them but still a very busy day and I learnt loads. My placement is at a Florists in the Aylesbury area and I am incredibly grateful to them for getting me out of a potentially very very big hole which the college created!

(I did finally get offered a placement from the college which would have started in the first week of May by which time I had already completed my 40 hours (hehe haha!!) - which would have been way too late - shame on them - do they want their students to fail?)