Young, inexperienced and screwed up work project. Now worried about the future

Hi,

I recently started a placement year at a organisation/company in the hope that I would have a good time learning and contributing towards a specific project. I thought by working, I would be learning the ropes and learning more about life in general as well as putting what I learnt in the lecture room into practice, as I am in my early 20s.

Anyways, things were going well at the start until I screwed up on a task. Upon screwing up on the task, the person on my team started being verbally abusive and it all got out of hand. Eventually, we weren't getting along with each other and our manager was the mutual mediator. As the project had other business stakeholders, it eventually became high risk as the stakeholders would cop out of the project due to failure and not meeting standards set. With myself going in a severe depressed mood everyday and suffering in the workplace, it came to a point where I had to cop out of the project myself as I knew the worst was going to come. I felt very upset because this project was my dream to me and it has all been ruined due to a bad work environment and simply being inexperience (as the skills needed for this role were skills that I did not really have. they were skills that were similar to some of my existing skills).

Thing is, as I have essentially ****ed up a project and wasted a bit of money do I have every right to be angry and guilty of myself? I feel I am the one to blame. I am young, in my early 20s and it is one of my first major jobs and I have ****ed up. I have now been shifted to another department within the organisation, however my failure has severely hit me hard

I won't start by saying that these things happen bla bla. I'll instead share something similar with you. During my engineering placement, I messed up some work allocated to me as I had lack of experience. I was down for ages, thought I wouldn't get a job after uni or anything after that. Anyway, I got back up, started working to the best I could, I simply had to forget what had happened, and not let it effect my work. But at the same time, I didn't forget the mistake I made, and made sure I wouldn't make it again. My supervisor left very good feedback in the end for me.
Try imagining yourself in the same situation again, and think how you would do things differently. And make sure mistakes aren't repeated. We all make mistakes, and we can't change what we've done, but we can ensure that things we are yet to do, are mistake free, or simply close to perfect. So don't worry. Best of luck


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I'm not too sure

Trust me, I am far too young and I screwed up a project and I left that project.

It was something that I was really passionate about, but now I don't know what to do. I am now part of different projects, however it is the fact that I screwed up this project. I am not sure if it will affect my reference

It shouldn't affect your reference providing you prove your worth during the rest of your time there and show them how you've learned from the mistake. Incidentally the biggest mistake was probably your reaction to your co-worker and not whatever the original mistake with the project was, if somebody with more experience in the company shouts at you again learn to calm them down and negotiate, and ask to work more closely with them to learn more about what you're doing.

All you can do is work hard and try to learn as much from your colleagues experiences as you can, and the right people will begin to notice.

I agree with the above poster that the only real problem seems to be that you had a massive bust up with a co worker which will never look good and has ended with you being moved... plenty of people will make mistakes, but you need to be able to get along with people to solve them...

all you can do now is try and learn from your mistakes, approach things better if something similar happens again and orget about what happened

Many thanks for your response.

As a young trainee, I feel that when someone is 'showing you the ropes' and mentoring you, they have to take a lot of factors into consideration such as inexperience etc. Yes I may have got support but it was the general attitude. It was very negative and never positive. If I make a mistake I never feel comfortable asking my mentor to help me out - because I know they are short-tempered. Surprisingly, others share a similar opinion to me.

I do feel very bad about the outcome of the first project, however this new project I am on seems to be a lot better and I am getting on a lot better with these new people .

It's only my reference which is worrying me. How do I explain to my boss, that it was not my intention to screw up the first project?

I know it's hard when the person you need help from is difficult to work with - I've been there! Unfortunately it's one of those things you do have to be able to deal with in the workplace because you will at some point encounter people who are difficult and you need to not allow it to ruin your job... easier said than done I know

I wouldn't make it an issue with your boss as you can't explain without slagging off your colleague which will paint you in a worse light, just demonstrate what you can do and this will be what your boss thinks about when you leave