School life / Pupil accounts, 2024 and 2026
A 1980s Yoghurt Pot, Two Boxes, One Whole Afternoon
Three Year 10 pupils spent their work experience in museums and archives, checking, counting and scanning. Our Tupperware drawer has not been checked since 2019.
One yogurt pot, 1980s. In March 2026 a Year 10 pupil from The Hart School in Rugeley spent the Tuesday of her work experience at the Staffordshire museum collection stores, where after lunch she “unwrapped various artefacts and random items such as a yogurt pot from the 1980s”. Then she checked them against the list for each box, because everything must be accounted for, down to shelf, bay and storeroom.
Two boxes. That took the rest of the afternoon.
A yoghurt pot from the 1980s, in our house, would not get a stocktake. It would get a seed tray and a second career on the windowsill. Our Tupperware drawer holds fourteen lids and nine boxes, and nothing in it has been accounted for since 2019.
Four days. A Year 10 pupil from Torquay Girls’ Grammar spent them at Newton Abbot Museum and liked the object boxes best, each object telling a different story, “whether a large painting or a dessert spoon”. She had seen bug traps before, in Young Curators sessions. Even so: “I was shocked to see what types of critters were in the bug traps!” I have not opened our loft since we moved in. I do not want to know what types.
9.17am. A Year 10 pupil arriving for a placement at The Common Room in Newcastle in July 2024 was due at 9.30, and spent the gap “loitering with a leaflet in the foyer”. By the end of the week they had scanned a whole old book, page by page, and enjoyed finishing a piece of work of their own.
Two boxes took a Year 10 with a list a whole afternoon. Our Tupperware drawer is one box. I started at two o’clock on Saturday. At six I found, at the back, a yoghurt pot with a dead geranium in it, possibly from the 1980s. I have labelled it with shelf, bay and room. It is now the best-documented object in the house.
Sources
- Year 10 pupil, My work experience, Staffordshire History Centre, 1 April 2026
- Year 10 pupil, A Week in the Life of Working at a Museum, Newton Abbot Museum, 3 June 2026
- Year 10 pupil, My Week at The Common Room: A Student’s Work Experience, 23 July 2024
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