It’s hard to know what occupation you want to have by the time you are sixteen. A lot of people barely know what field of work they are interested in. I, for example, don’t know what occupation I want but I have some ideas for what interests me. I want to help people, specifically kids, but that doesn’t narrow my options very much. If I can be creative, that would allow me to enjoy my job, which is something I am looking for in a job.
The assignment that my class was given was called the job shadow assignment, where we go to someone’s work for a day to see if we would enjoy that career path. When we were first given the job shadow assignment, I had no idea who I could go to work with. My instinct was to look for an elementary school teaching job or therapist job because I know that those jobs include the aspects that I want in a job. I decided that I should find something that was a little different than those jobs so that I could explore other opportunities.
The first thing that I did was make a call list. A call list would help me narrow down so options of who I could call to ask about this job shadow opportunity.
One of my moms friends is an interior designer who also teaches classes for designing. Perfect! This job is creative and teaches younger people, even if it is very different from being an elementary school teacher or a therapist. Thankfully, Grace was more than happy to help me out with this project!
The next step was coming up with a list of questions. This would be useful because if I was prepared for the interview, I could expand on these questions and get more out of the interview. The questions that I needed to ask would help me understand the job, how to get the job, and what the responsibilities of the jobs are.
After making the preparations for our meeting, I confirmed my appointment with Grace and it was time for the job shadow assignment!
After talking with Grace, we decided that instead of joining her as she worked with clients as an interior designer, that I would go to one of her interior design night classes at BCIT. Before arriving to the class, I had a chance to ask all of my questions, and a few additional ones. Here were the answers I received!
Now that the homework portion of this project was complete, I was able to focus on the class and enjoy the experience! Here are the notes that I took during Grace’s lecture!
In addition to these notes, I decided to take my job shadow assignment one step further and ask her students questions about interior design!
In between class times, I had the chance to explore BCIT and the interior design projects in the halls. These are some of the projects that interested me the most!
The last part of the job shadow assignment was to make a thank you letter for Grace! This was my favourite part of the project because I was able to express what I leaned and how the job shadow assignment helped me better understand interior design as an occupation.
I really enjoyed my time with Grace at BCIT, and I hope that I can continue to do job shadow proects in the future so that I can learn more about occupations that I am interested in.
Bibliography:
“Best South African Job Websites of 2017.” BuzzSouthAfrica – Famous People, Celebrity Bios, Updates, Trendy News, 27 Feb. 2018, buzzsouthafrica.com/job-websites-in-south-africa/.
“Job Opportunity.” Windy Nook Primary School, 8 Jan. 2018, windynookprimary.org/2018/01/job-opportunity/.
“Interior Design.” Roomsketcher Blog RSS, www.roomsketcher.com/interior-design/.
Leszczynski, Jocelyne. “BCIT Heads National College Ranking – BCIT News.” BCIT Commons, 17 Mar. 2017, commons.bcit.ca/news/2014/10/bcit-heads-national-college-ranking/.
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