“Don’t pick a job with great vacation time. Pick a job that doesn’t need escaping from”. What a beautiful quote right? But you may be wondering why on earth does it have to do with working and jobs. That’s because for a day, I was going to work! Every year for all grade nines There is a day when they are allowed to skip school and go to visit there parents work place. This is a great experience and allows teenagers to learn about what it takes to support a family and what jobs they may be interested in. I was lucky to get this experience as well, but in a little more detail. For this post I was tasked with answering and reflecting on the curricular competency’s and creating a short film about my experience and learning. Here’s my story of take your kid to work day. 

My mom is a leadership consultant. This basically means she helps leaders improve.  I was exited to see how exactly she helped them and learn if I would enjoy a job like hers. After preparing my video plan, I drifted to a peace sleep. I woke to my mom saying “wake up Owen!”, all I could think was what time was it. It turns out, too my horror, that I was being woken up at 6:00am. After lifting the morning haze from my brain I quickly made breakfast, ate it, and gathered the things I would need for my day. iPad? Check, Mic? Check, brain? Check. I was all set to go. We got in the car and left for the city. There was a beautiful fog all over they city in the morning, I knew it was a great opportunity for B roll so I got filming. 

The beautiful morning fog.

In my plan for my video I knew I wanted to get a shot of me walking through the doors of the first building I got to. It turned out pretty well except for they fact that the camera is a little shaky. The building itself was the fortis building, a medium height, quite modern piece of architecture. It’s located right beside trump tower which makes the building look tiny.

Inside the fortis building.

We were visiting one of my moms clients for a video meeting as all the executives were in Toronto. This is one of the reasons we had to get up so early, to adjust to the clients time difference. In the session my mom helped the leaders write presentations with the leaders script. I got to follow along which not only helped me with my presentation skills, but also gave me a better understanding of the impact that my mom was having on her clients. I managed to get some really good footage in this meeting. After the meeting was done I got a quick snack before sitting down with my mom to learn about the work she does in the background. What I mean by this is all the invoicing, job searching and tax work she does. I found this part of the day very interesting as I knew very little about any of those topics. My mom showed me the apps she uses to stay on top of her work and explained all the background work to me.

Demonstrating presentation developing.

Once again we were off to another meeting. In this meeting you mom was a explaining the results of the Birkman career and personality test. This test tells you your strengths and weaknesses regarding you emotions, thought processes and interactions with people. It also tells you what jobs you like and what parts of those jobs make them enjoyable to you. This was perfect as one of the competency’s I had for this project was “Question self and others about how individual purposes and passions can support the needs of the local and global community when considering career choices”. Definitely a wordy competency but I was interested to see what careers I got and why, and how they contributed to the needs of the local and global. On my Birkman test their were many broad spectrums of jobs my personality would usually enjoy. Because of the number of jobs it was clear to me that I could easily connect my individual purposes and passions to helping the community through work. I also learned and saw first hand how important flexibility was at this meeting. The meeting started late because a meeting before ended late and some people forgot their tests. My mom quickly had the tests printed at the office building and then adapted her presentation to move more quickly. I was very impressed because if she hadn’t Ben able to adapt and stay calm the meeting could have gone down hill. After that my mom had a dentist appointment. When we got home my mom and I went to her home office for our interview. This is another part of my day that helped me answer the competency “Recognize the impact of personal public identity in the world of work”. I asked my mom for her thoughts on social media, as this an increasingly popular way for people to have a personal public identity. 

About to go on a popular social media app, Instagram.

She said that it had a big impact on peoples risk taking ability as everyone could see their mistakes. This is a big deal for her because risk taking is one things she teaches to leaders. She also said that social media allowed employers to see your personal life very easily so you have to be careful as to what you post or you may not get a job. As you can see personal public identity has a big impact on finding jobs and the risks we take while we have them. Also in this interview I answered the competency “Recognize and explore diverse perspectives on how work contributes to our community and society.” I asked my mom how her work Impacts the community. She answered that there are many ways, whether it is supporting the community through the impact you and your job have on people, or even simply supporting a charity through your work like my mom does. In one of her leadership groups she has a spot that she gives to the leader of a local charity for free. This way the leader can benefit from the learning at no cost, this obviously has a direct impact on the community. As you can see their are many diverse ways to help the community. 

Overall I had quite an adventure and learned a lot about invoicing, taxes, planing and how important flexibility really is on this take your kid to work day. I answered the competency’s and feel like I have a good understanding of them. I also made a video I am proud of where you can see parts of my moms interview yourself and get a more visual idea of what my day was like. 

And of course I also had a great time exploring the world of work. I hope you enjoyed may post and learned a little about jobs and work yourself.  As always new posts are always appearing on my blog so stay tuned! I’ll catch you guys later.