Trying to figure out what you want to do in your life can be tough. It can be especially tough when you’re a high school student who has almost zero clue what they want to do after high school… like me! As this seems to be a very common trend among students in high school, the Planning course has been implemented in the school curriculum in order to help students get over obstacles similar to the one I mentioned. 

Now, this isn’t to say I have ABSOLUTELY no clue for what I want to do. For example, I’m really interested in business, leadership, and taking on big projects. You might be thinking, “there’s tons of jobs that utilize those skills! What are you talking about?” The problem with that is that it’s TRUE! There’s so many different directions, positions, and careers that I could pursue, that it’s kind of overwhelming to think about. There’s always the chance that I might not be interested in the career I pursue or that I could be a better fit for something else. That’s why I have done a LOT of thinking and I usually tend to come back to the topic of entrepreneurship and creating a company. It has always interested me and I’ve had little experiences with it in the past, so why not try it out?

That’s where our Planning course comes back in but more specifically, the Job Shadow Project that’s within our Planning course. Essentially, we thought about what careers we might like to follow and we reached out to people/companies who would be willing to give “a day in the life” tour of what their careers involve.  It’s a pretty self explanatory project but there’s a few details that are required to make this a PROJECT and not an event. Starting off with the fact that there were several “stages” of this project that needed to be completed in order for our projects to be, well, complete! I’ll get into detail about each stage and what I did for them.

STAGE 1: 

So this stage was essentially meant to get us started. We were tasked to research and compile a list of potential job opportunities that interested us. I started off by searching up a list of startup companies based in Vancouver as I feel like it would give me a better idea on the earlier stages of creating a business and the challenges that come with it. I think my mistake was searching “TOP STARTUPS IN VANCOUVER” as when I contacted them, they were all pretty busy and gave me options to visit in the summer. I took it one step back and asked my parents to refer me to people they know that have created their own businesses. Luckily enough, my parents are friends with someone who created his own startup company and is still in the developmental stage. I gave his company a call and he was able to squeeze me in for a day. So with that, stage 1 was complete!

STAGE 2: 

Just showing up to the job shadow isn’t enough though. There’s only so much someone can explain about their job and it’s important to help them out by asking questions that YOU want to know. For example, the company I job shadowed was a tech-based health company. Although I’m not necessarily interested in health, there’s a LOT that could be asked which could help me learn more about making a company and what it’s like. With that in mind, I focused a lot more on aspects of being the CEO of a startup and the different aspects of creating company instead of the health aspects of his company. 

THE JOB SHADOW:

So I had already done my preparations for the job shadow and now, I was ready. I showed up at the Porton Health headquarters in Surrey and prepared for my day as the company’s “temp.” Porton Health is a really cool company started by Dele Omueti. He was born in Nigeria and lived there for a large portion of his life but he eventually moved to Canada where he had taken a career in health care as a product manager. This is where he came up with his company, and he eventually left his job to fully pursue making his idea come to life. What is this business you may ask? During my discussions with him, he talked about how Nigeria’s healthcare was —and still is— subpar and he wanted to give Nigeria another option for healthcare. This is where his company comes in. He wanted to create a website that creates a virtual bridge for patients and doctors from around the world with the ultimate goal of making this accessible to people from anywhere in the world. My first order of business was to introduce myself to the whole team. Although I wasn’t expecting such a big team for the startup company in the first place, I was surprised to be greeting only five people! This didn’t include an additional partner located in Atlanta, Georgia which I got to talk to over the phone, but I’ll come back to that later. Anyways, the company was located within a little hub of other startup companies surrounding them on each side. This meant that the whole team usually worked together within the confines of one room. This was really cool for me as it meant I was able to see how everybody worked and how they collaborated with each other. Something that’s important to mention is that within the group of five, three are students from SFU which I found interesting as it meant they were willing to balance school and a very busy job solely because they were passionate about Dele’s goal too. The team consisted of three full-stack developers, an accountant, and the CEO. All of them gave me little tours about what they did, but I was mainly back and forth between the CEO and one of the full-stack developers. This was also interesting as it gave me two completely different experiences and perspectives when I was going back and forth between the CEO and the developer as you might expect, these people had completely different jobs and responsibilities. 

At the time, Porton Health was in the alpha stage of launching their platform which meant I got to test the main functions of their site as I was an outside source who didn’t know anything about how to use their platform. I was given the test accounts of both a doctor and a patient, and I was given the task to set up a written consultation between the two accounts (on the mobile platform) while writing down any problems or challenges I come by in trying to do so. I really enjoyed doing this as it made me feel like part of the team as I had eventually created a “ticket” for them which included all the things that did/didn’t go well for me during my task. They then took this feedback and managed to make some changes based on that. Another memorable moment was my private meeting with Dele in which he told me the essentials for what it takes to create your own company. He even took the time for any questions I had. This was great as I knew he was really busy, but he was able to take the time to teach me about being an entrepreneur and what kind of mindset is necessary to survive in the business world. At this point, my day was coming to an end. Every day, the Porton Health team individually reports to the person from Atlanta who happens to be an investor. After everyone was done, I was able to report to him too and I got to talk about what I did with them and some of the things I learned. With that, my day had ended. I said my goodbyes and packed up my stuff and with that, I left. 

STAGE 3: 

The third stage was to write a thank-you letter as it’s definitely worth expressing gratitude to your job shadow host as they did take time out of their busy days to immerse you in their work worlds. I’m very comfortable with writing and I didn’t expect it to be too difficult to write the thank-you letter but due to the very specific and concise format of the letters, I struggled trying to take all my gratitude and learning experiences and putting it into a short letter. Either way, I had eventually gotten a hold of what I was going to write and I think I was able to come up with a pretty decent letter. 

STAGE 4: 

The fourth and final stage of this project actually happens to be this post! I really enjoyed being able to do this job shadow as it really gave me the opportunity to learn more about a career I might be interested in. This also gave me a firsthand experience to see what I would actually be doing as an entrepreneur and what kind of people I would most likely be working with. I’ve always aimed to do well in school but my day at Porton Health made me realize how much I would like to be in a leader role for a product I would like to make. With that in mind, it’s also important for me to take classes that can prepare me for the kind of working world I would like to be in. I know that there are a lot of external factors that could influence me success in the business world such as having a team that doesn’t work too well together or having my ideas shut down by others but I think that I’m able to adapt to those kind of changes. It reminds me of Mr. Omueti from Porton Health as he talked to me about commitment and how success comes from pushing through the many obstacles that present themselves to us. If you’re not ready to commit and get pushed down, how will you be able to get back up and do something great?