Is it good to do work experience in a museum even if it’s not an archaeology museum? What type of work experience did you do? Aiyesha (14)

I would always say that getting some work experience is a good idea – the key thing is that it’s experience of work, which is very different from school or college. Museums are ideal as working in one, even if it’s not an archaeology museum, will give you a good idea of how objects are catalogued, conserved, stored and displayed. All very useful if you want to go into archaeology. But really there are all sorts of skills that are useful in the world of modern archaeology – on my last dig I had to do anything from hiring machinery to photography and making the tea (I’m not bad at that).

I didn’t really do any work experience as I am so old that we didn’t do this sort of thing when I was at school. So apart from random holiday jobs (postman, filing clerk, shelving builder, road sign painter, fire escape erector) I just started digging when I left school and have been doing archaeology ever since. I hope that this helps!