As part of Ridgeway College’s annual “Work Week Placement Programme”, two students, Kalpesh Dave and Andani Mabunda, spent a couple of days at the office of the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror in Louis Trichardt.

The programme, aimed at Grade 10 students who have completed their IGCSE exams, helps students to get a feel for what it would be like to work in a career or in a field of expertise a student may be thinking of pursuing. More often than not, students go running the other way because their experience was "not what they thought it would be".

According to Kalpesh and Andani, their experience at the newspaper was, in a word, “different".

"Working at the newspaper was a little out of the norm for me as I usually work in a salon," said  Kalpesh, explaining that he wanted to get a feel of how the newspaper is laid out on computer before it is printed.

“I thought it would be amazing to see how it was brought to life by nothing but a computer, text and a couple of pixelated images … It was amazing, no doubt, but I obviously couldn't help with this as it requires training to learn how to do and, after all, I was only there for a week."

On their first day, Kalpesh and Andani spent some time in the lay-out department to see how advertisements are compiled. They saw how Solly's Discount World's advert was done and gave some of their input, as well as what they thought looked good in terms of colour and which picture was best for certain products. At about 15:45, they were told to write an article with a 40-minute deadline.

"Needless to say, our article didn't make it into the newspaper, but I think we both learned how to work in high-pressure situations. This experience will help us in future" said Andani.

"I learned a thing or two in my week here at the newspaper; one of the most important things being to proofread articles. I felt very chuffed with myself when I found mistakes in our very own honours evening captions. After all, we are all human in the end and all make mistakes. I also found the printing press where the newspapers are printed to be a very elaborate set-up. It was just a pity that one of the machines was down. It looked like a real sight to see,” said Kalpesh.

Kalpesh and Andani realised that Tuesdays and Wednesdays are extremely high-pressure days for the staff because those are the printing days, so people are trying to get their work done.

"We found waking up to be at work by 07:30 extremely difficult as it was basically school all over again," said both Kalpesh and Andani. Both thanked the newspaper for hosting them.