Punctuality

Go to the site on time! When you first start, plan to arrive 10 – 15 minutes early. This extra margin could save you from making a negative first impression by arriving late due to unfamiliarity with the route to the site, or the parking facilities, traffic jams, or the like. When lateness becomes a pattern, check your own attitudes towards the job.

Communication

Notify your supervisor whenever you must be absent from work. Obtain your supervisor’s permission in advance so three is no question about the legitimacy of your absence. Try to keep absences down to a minimum.

Listen to Directions

Follow instructions, rules, and regulations! When you start your Field Period, contact your supervisor and find out exactly what you are expected to do, and once again go over your learning goals and objectives with him/her. Ask questions, and keep asking them until you understand completely where you stand and how you should proceed. Directions are usually simple to comprehend, but many people stumble on this item because they fail to listen, were daydreaming, or were not paying attention.

Ethics

Do not take unfair advantage of your Field Period site by extending coffee breaks, lengthening lunch breaks, arriving late to work, making frequent personal phone calls or text messaging, reading newspapers or magazines, using computers/internet for personal use, or stopping work for a half-hour before quitting time. Sooner or later, this attitude will be noticed and will create a negative impression on your supervisor.

Stay Occupied

Keep busy all the time during your Field Period. Offer to take on more duties if you don’t have enough work to do. Learn the jobs of others around you. Volunteer to help others.

Friendliness

Become acquainted with other employees at the site. Engage in friendly conversation with others on coffee breaks or during lunch. Get to know experienced employees. Other employees can tell you the informal procedures that operate at the site.

Anticipate Accurately

Develop realistic expectations about the work you will be doing at the site. Students who spend 2-4 years at college frequently experience an expectations gap – the difference between what college students think the world should be like and what the world is really like. The campus is often quite different from the world of work; this can be quite a shock for some college students.

Teamwork

Learn to work cooperatively with your immediate supervisor and other work associates. Your supervisor will generally make assignments, evaluate your performance, and offer constructive criticism as needed. Working with and along side of others is an important skill to gain.

Stay in Style

Avoid extremes in dress, mannerisms, and hairstyles. It is better to remain on the conservative side at least until you know more about the lay of the land, Even where no official dress policies exist, employers expect workers to maintain whatever standards of good taste or acceptability prevail in the organization.

Contribute

Show yourself to be a planner and problem solver. Careful planning, combined with goal setting and frequent analysis of your efforts, will help you gain these valuable skills.

Excellence

Concentrate on the quality of your work at the site. You want your work to be accurate, well done, and neat. This will depend on the knowledge you have about the job and your ability to learn new responsibilities. You will learn that employers and other work associated will tolerate quite a lot if a person’s work carried a mark of excellence.

Healthy Self-Confidence

Project a positive self-image at the site. Acknowledge other people with good eye contact and a pleasant smile. Gracefully accept compliments for your work. If you make a mistake, acknowledge it, but don’t dwell on it. This is a learning experience, learn from it, gain valuable skills from it, make contacts from it (network), but more of all enjoy it!