Hello there. Welcome to my blog and say hello to a brand new post!
This post is going to be detailing my “take your kid to work day” experience so get ready for another whirlwind of a blog post. (Kinda kidding)
A few weeks ago, Ms. Willemse told the class that each member of the class would be participating in something called “take your kid to work day”. Now, the title is pretty explanatory. We were to go to our parent’s work for a day and see what their job was all about. We got the opportunity to see what they did, how they did it, and a behind the scenes view of the whole process.
Now that I had the opportunity, I just had to decide: where would I go? I had two choices, my mom’s job or my dad’s. My dad is an engineer, of sorts and my mom is a elementary school councillor. To me, my dad’s job seemed a bit more interesting and so that’s what I went with. Luckily for me, my dad’s job actually put on a TYKTWD event, so there was plans for me to participate in that.
To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what he did. I knew that he worked at an engineering company called SNC Lavalin. I knew that he had a specific role of bidding for big projects such as highways, bridges and dams, but that’s just about it.
I expressed my discontentment about my knowledge of his company to my dad and he steered me in the direction of SNC Lavalin’s website. On the site, they list 6 markets that they use for business. Once I had read a bit about each one, I felt a little more confident. I wasn’t going into the day completely blindsided.
The teachers had been telling us about this day for a while. And of course, knowing PLP, we had the task of writing a blog post and creating a video about the whole day. When I went to his building, I had knew the tasks I had to do. In a way, it changed the perspective of the whole day because it was revolved around focusing on the video. However, it didn’t distract me that much.
So it was set. I was going to go with my dad to his work. Grade 9’s around the city would be joining me in going to their parents work.
I woke up much earlier than usual. I had a big day ahead and a schedule to follow. We pulled up at my dad’s building at about 8:40. The schedule of events looked something like this:
My dad dropped me off in a large conference room. There were a few students waiting around and before long, there were 20 of us there. We milled around, waiting for our day to start. Nobody really talked that much.
After a while, an adult came into the room. We all sat down and he introduced himself as an engineer for SNC-Lavalin. He tried to break the ice between all of us by asking us some typical questions like “what do you like about school” and “do you play any sports”. It was pretty awkward.
This part wasn’t great for filming because I didn’t want to whip out my iPad and film a bunch of people I didn’t even know.
After that, a guy came into the same conference room. He was a safety specialist. His role in the company was making sure everybody was safe. I learned that SNC-Lavalin takes regular safety checks and also does safety workshops with their employees. We did a “game” where the man duct-taped our thumbs to our palms. That way, our thumbs were regarded basically useless. Then, he had untie our shoes and try and re-tie them using only our fingers. I struggled to do this. The point he was trying to make with the game is that with one small slip of concentration, you could be disabled for the rest of your life.
After that, we had a quick presentation on clean power. During this, we looked at the different types and forms of efficient, renewable power. I learned about hydro power, nuclear power, solar power, etc.
Another thing we did during the day was virtual reality. Now, I’m used to virtual reality being used for video games and that’s pretty much it. Engineers use virtual reality in a much more important way. They use VR to plan out building sites before they actually build them. They get the feeling of actually being there. It saves time for both parties building it because it eliminates the hassle of actually going to the building site a bunch. When I was there, they had the VR set up to show a dam. This dam hasn’t actually been built yet. I think it was pretty neat how VR could just take me there. With the VR, you could fly and also float through walls.
That was pretty neat.
One other thing that I did throughout the course of the day was a team-building engineering activity. This included 3 feet worth of tape, 3 feet worth of string, lots of dry spaghetti and a marshmallow. The goal was to build the highest free-standing structure and then balance a marshmellow on top of it. My group decided to break the long spaghetti sticks in half and use the halves to make a cube. When we finished one cube, we made another cube and put it on top. Lastly, we used the string to balance the marshmallow on top. I think that we worked really well as a team to complete the exercise.
Once the day finished, I had a bit of time to mirror my dad in his office before we went home. While I was building towers, my dad had set up an interview with one of his colleagues for me. I used the time before the interview as prime filming time. I got lots of shots of the office that were quite useful to me.
The interview actually went quite smoothly. It was interesting to learn about different people’s roles throughout the office.
During the whole day (as you read above) we were creating a video about what the day was like, what we did, what we learned, etc. I thought mine turned out alright. If you want to get a further understanding of my day, give it a watch!
This video is kind of closing out our video-making skills unit. I’m sure that this knowledge will come in handy sometime later in life.
To conclude, take you kid to work day was a really valuable experience. I didn’t really have a good understanding of what my dad did, or even where he worked! It was really good to have to opportunity to check out what he does, even if it’s just reading emails and doing paperwork. It was a really fun day and it was a great learning experience.
This will wrap up today’s blog post. I hope you all enjoyed reading!
See ya next time,
Nik
