It was September 2010 and I was heading back to uni to start my third year in Business and Management. I’d just spent my whole summer doing virtually nothing, working 12 hours a week in a shoe shop. I realised I’d just wasted the last three months of my life. Next year would be different.

I came across the BUNAC Work America programme and thought "perfect". After registering and looking through the online Job Zone, I applied for roughly 10 jobs and got offered one as a lifeguard in Ocean City, Maryland where the motto is work hard, play harder. Perfect.

The process of applying for a job, getting offered one and sorting out all the paper work was really smooth and time flew by. Before I knew it, it was 28th May and I was jetting off to Manhattan, 1,764 miles from sunny Glasgow!

Frontier Town supplied us with accommodation; I was one of the first ones there so got the best bed! I couldn’t believe it when seven out of 11 of us were from Scotland. The initial fears of me losing my accent soon faded.

So to the job itself…I basically spent every day for three and a half months sitting in the basking sunshine! I had to jump in on the odd occasion due to people panicking but that was it. I spent my days watching people float past me on the lazy river, shouting at folk to stay in their tubes (rubber rings to you and I) and humouring them with my accent. I also spent days working on one of the slides, pushing from the top or catching at the bottom, or trying to keep the chaos under control in the kids pool.

Whenever someone heard my accent they wanted to know all about me, who I was, where I was from and why I was there. The customers seemed to think that lifeguard = goggle fixer, sunglasses fixer, time keeper and sunburn expert. We felt like celebrities out there - even walking down the boardwalk you’d see people pointing and saying “look... the lifeguards from Frontier town!”

Ocean City itself was a great place, a partying beach resort. However, I wanted to see more of America. I went on organised trips to Washington DC, Philadelphia and Atlantic City. I waved at Obama, or someone in the Whitehouse anyways, ran up the rocky steps and gambled in Donald Trump’s casino. There was also the option of trips to Boston, Niagara Falls and various theme parks;

Summer 2011 was without a doubt the best summer of my life. Crab eating, boogie boarding, trailer parties, philli cheese steaks, beer pong, wild horses on the beach, 10 mile cycles to Wal-Mart, 6ft snakes on the loose, meeting friends for life... I’ve hardly touched on it. Go experience it yourself, do something different this summer.

Live the American dream next summer 2012 - book your place on Work America