Maya Williams, 16, is a student at Stroud High School and an aspiring writer.

She lives in Chalford.

‘WORK experience week’.

That was what my school decreed for the last week of Year 12 before summer. I was lucky enough to get a work experience place at the Stroud News & Journal.

That Monday morning when I was back at school to interview Nigel Prenter for an article, the sixth form building looked empty without the noise and buzz of students.

Trying to ignore the stares of confused teachers asking why I was there, I was doing my best to come up with a list of questions to ask Mr Prenter with the help of coffee. (Mr Prenter made me another cup when I arrived to speak with him and I was twitching all day.) In the afternoon, I had the opportunity to go with a real journalist to watch an interview, which was different from what I imagined.

Interestingly, it was done a lot like a conversation.

I spent the next four days in the office trying to be a journalist. My first impression, drinking coffee while carrying around a laptop and walking briskly from place to place feeling like a suitably stressed professional, wasn’t quite what journalism actually was.

For a start, it was a lot harder than being a columnist. Column writing is more personal, you can write about whatever you want in whatever way you want to write it but writing news reports and articles is different.

You have to adapt to the house style, make it impersonal, and articles are not meant to be ‘creative’. Producing a piece of work outlining the facts without being boring is pretty challenging.

Adjusting to the house style was quite odd because all the paragraphs need to be maximum one sentence long. I’m a bit of a fan of long paragraphs but unfortunately newspapers are not.

Despite the paragraph issues, working with SNJ was quite enjoyable and I learnt a lot. Everyone was helpful and offered constructive criticism and made lots of tea. On my second day there, after walking to school on my lunch break to see a teacher, they wouldn’t let me back in until I’d eaten my lunch. They’re very nice.

I was also treated like an adult there, rather than some random person they didn’t know what to do with. It was nice to feel useful and be trusted with actual work.

Working with SNJ has been my third work experience placement after two others at local publishing houses.

These have made the adult world seem a lot less scary than it used to.

Maybe I will be capable of actually earning a living.