Tag Archives: teaching

Creating the Job You Want When Working the Job You Need

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This past summer I worked as a sales associate at one of my favorite stationery stores. I succesfully found and secured an intterview for the job by using a site that functions similarly to Handshake. When I was hired for the job I was expecting to learn how to do new tasks since it was my first, and probably only, retail job. To be honest, although I was excited to be working at a stationery store, the basic job description did not sound particularly engaging at first. As expected, I learned how to engage with customers, work the register, and discuss product. Yet, it was what I brought to the job from prior experiences and my own passions that made me excited to go to work every day.

On one of my first days of work, my manager asked me off-handedly if I happened to have good handwriting. I replied that I thought so and would love to give any special projects she had a try. She handed me a blackboard and a chalk marker, and I headed to the back table to work on what would become my first masterpiece.

After that, I became the regular signage creator at the store. While working on the register I would be simultaneously creating signage for the store. I blended the expected responsibilities of the position with the new tasks I adopted. Soon, I was helping create window displays and crafting models to advertise what customers could make in our workshops. I felt like I was creating in a meaningful way. What I was spending time crafting was seen my hundreds, even thousands of customers, and added to the atmosphere of the store. I loved being creative at what could’ve been “just a summer job”.

Beyond designing my job to be an outlet for creativity, I was able to teach kids at the small arts camp we ran. My manager asked me to help the kids craft with her, and from that day forward my shifts were scheduled so that I could cover the hours in which the kids camp was being taught. I learned how to engage with our youngest (and custest!) customers while having patience, compassion, and a smile. I had so much fun working over the summer, and it was all because of the duties of the job that I did not even expect to be doing. Perhaps most importantly, I felt a purpose in seemingly arbitrary skills like good handwriting in a world where we list skills like Word and Excel on our resumes, not calligraphy.

I learned that just like any situation, jobs truly are what you make of them. You can think of your summer job as “just a summer job”, or as an opportunity to learn new skills and to take on the extra responsibilities that you specifically enjoy. Ultimately, it is what you choose to do in your workplace that will be the bullet points on your resume. But beyond that, what you choose to do is what makes your workday enjoyable.

Taking Initiative in your Internship

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So you want to stand out in your internship position? Well if you do you’re at the right place. Because who doesn’t want positive recognition? The classic advice is to take initiative. Seize opportunity. Much easier said than done, especially for some of my introverted friends out there (love you guys!). Coming into an internship or first job you may not know exactly what it is you want to ultimately do. So how do you target and find opportunities that will be helpful? I suppose the answer is, what’s the harm in trying? In perusing any opportunity that comes your way. The primrose path is rarely straight and you never know what will ultimately lead you to what you want to be doing. I came into my internship with an unclear idea of what I wanted to do, explored a ton, took on responsibilities, and now I can take that knowledge into the future. But I never would have had some of the most amazing experiences if I never took initiative.

The first few weeks in my internship were really spent learning what my place was and learning the basic expectations and responsibilities of my role. And it is of course imperative to perform the tasks you are given to the best of your ability. Make a name for yourself as someone reliable. Someone that will not only do what is required, but do it efficiently and with their brain turned on. How can you make the lives of those around you easier? People tend to remember little things. Things that don’t even require much effort on your part. Like if you are asked to gather and organize information, presenting it in an easy to read fashion. Once you have developed a name for yourself as a reliable worker and quick thinker, don’t be afraid to ask if you can help with anything.

For example, I was brought in as a Film/TV Development intern which mostly consisted of reading scripts and providing written feedback reports on them to executives. But there was also a Virtual Reality division of the company and I was dying to know more. Although I knew very little about VR at the time, IT LOOKED SO COOL! So I saw the team working on a project one day and asked if they needed any help. I didn’t know it at the time but I would end up learning so much about this emerging industry. But not only that, it furthered my reputation as someone who was invested in making the most out of my time. And that initiative will help you stand out in people’s minds in the future. Maybe those who have been working longer will have a better perspective on this, but from what I experienced, it is the little things that make you stand out.

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A Summer Teaching Experience

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Hello! It’s me again, back in California, back at Scripps, and back, undoubtedly, in my element. Happy as I am to have returned to the chaos that is campus life, I’ve found myself occasionally yearning for the routine I had established for myself over the summer. I always find it a difficult thing to switch between homes. Still, I’m unbelievably happy to be back here, and to come back with a newfound sense of confidence that I got from my summer job.

This summer, I worked for an organization called The GO Project as a Teacher’s Assistant. I had expressed concern last year that I would be woefully unqualified for the job, as I had little to no experience working in a classroom environment. But the training I had on educational inequality, and the progressive teaching techniques that GO uses, prepared me to deal with the variety of circumstances that I would- and eventually did- face. I was still the youngest person working the job, but I believe that gave me an advantage; I felt like I was able to just talk to the kids a lot better than my older counterparts. Also, because I wasn’t a teacher, I wasn’t comparing the kids at GO to kids I would have taught before. This is an important distinction, because many of the kids at GO have behavioral problems or learning disabilities that made them difficult to manage in a classroom environment. But to me, they were just kids; I soon began to refer to them as “my kids.”

Though I had never been in a classroom before, I found that having sixteen eight-year-olds looking towards me as an authority figure immediately forced me to adapt to my environment. Every day was nothing short of a day-long adrenaline rush. The structure of the day worked out so that from 9-2, the kids were in an academic day, but from 2-5, they were in “enrichment periods,” including Art and Poetry, Drama, and Martial Arts. I was the only person that was with them for the whole day, and I gained the trust and support of the kids as a result. My group was incredibly challenging: I had a runner, some fighters, and a lot of dramatics. Though I used a lot of effective teaching methods, I found that the most important thing I could do was to not get frustrated with the kids, and to be empathetic. A lot of kids in my class at GO came from unimaginable circumstances, but the effort and love that they put into our time everyday showed me a lot about the resilience of the human heart.

Aside from the kids, I was working with a fantastic teaching team, which supported my kids and me. A lot of what I learned came from other teachers; whether it be the “One two three, eyes on me!” “One two, eyes on you” chant that I would use to get the children’s attention, or the cool-down techniques that helped when dealing with an eight-year olds mental breakdown. I had people that would chase my runner’s for me, and people who would take care of the kids if I had to run to the bathroom. It was amazing to feel like a part of a real, working team.

The logistics of my job at GO made it so I had a two-hour commute every day, so it was literally all I was doing for six weeks. While I don’t think I’ll be returning to GO next summer, I don’t think I would trade the experience for anything.

Dressing the Part

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I recently hosted a Scripps prospie who will be interning for the same organization as me this summer, and what she told me came as a bit of a shock. Not only, she said, is the environment that I’m going to be working in one of the most professional she’s ever been exposed to, but all workers must adhere to a strict dress code. In this case, that means no halter-tops, nothing above the knees, and no leggings. While I had opposed dress codes before in my own public school, they make sense to have as an employee of a school, a position in which I would be expected to dress in a professional way that commanded respect even amongst seven year olds. Still, the fact that I’ll be working in an environment that lacks air conditioning, in summer in New York, poses the dual problem of dealing with the heat in one of the most fashionable cities in the world.

When I interviewed for the job in the dead of winter, I had to shadow a teacher for a brief period of time. I was immediately intimidated by the hip and chic attire the teacher, a young woman, was wearing- I remember she had these really cute black leather boots, and while she wasn’t wearing one of those really big floppy hats, she seemed like the type of person who could pull one off. I, on the other hand, was wearing a dinky old cardigan with a patterned top that my mom had bought me underneath. I call this shirt my interview shirt. I have worn it to every interview because it’s kind of cute and not too revealing, but at the same time, it doesn’t exactly exude power, or the idea that I could be the type of girl to pull off a big floppy hat like that teacher. Looking back on the interview, it was like that episode of Broad City, where Ilana accidentally (or purposefully?) wears a dog hoodie to a meeting with an important buyer at her job. The buyer, played by Vanessa Williams, looks absolutely flawless, and Ilana is immediately impressed and embarrassed.

vanessawilliams

This summer, I want to do things differently. The biggest challenge for me is dressing in a way that conveys this sense of power and confidence while working with the New York City heat. What I buy will be very dependent on whether or not jeans are allowed at the job- currently, I have several dark-wash, no rip pairs that in my eye seem appropriate for a teaching job, but then again, what do I know? While I’m too busy with work right now to really do some shopping, I can see myself burning a lot of cash at stores like Zara and H&M. Fashion has always been something that’s important to me in terms of expressing myself, and I’m excited to dress this newfound part of myself- the part that has a career that’s making a difference in the real world- in the best way possible.

Incredibly Uncomfortable New Experiences

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Hello! It’s been awhile since I last blogged, and a lot has happened in my career journey since then. Over my spring break, I networked and went on a group job interview in New York City. Now, I’m experiencing the excruciating pain of waiting for that job to get back to me. All of these things have been new experiences for me, and I’ve been uncomfortable a lot. Still, I think I’ve learned a lot from them.

The job interview that I went on was for the organization that I previously mentioned, which runs an academic summer camp for underprivileged NYC schoolchildren. I was applying to be a teacher’s assistant, and the interview was at 9 am the day after I flew into Newark airport from LAX. Because the interview was on a Saturday (and couldn’t be any other day of the week), I had to drive into New York by myself. This means that I had to get up at 6:30 Eastern time in order to shower, get dressed, and still make it to the interview on time. Needless to say, I was exhausted- my flight had gotten in at 10 pm the day before, and the time difference was killing me.

I got into the city okay, and got some coffee as soon as I could. I usually don’t do well on coffee- it makes me anxious- but I figured I could use some caffeine in my system; besides, I used to drink it every day in high school, when I would never get enough sleep. While it kept me awake, it certainly didn’t calm my nerves. As soon as I got to the interview, the woman who was interviewing me and the other candidates asked if I had a printed copy of my résumé, because she had everyone else’s but mine. I didn’t, and profusely apologized. I was so embarrassed that I debated just calling it a day, but there were two other parts to the interview process I still had to go through.

The first part of the interview process involved me being in a classroom with first-graders. I loved this part. It was great to see the individual attention that each child was getting- there was an adult in the room for every two kids. The teacher was excellent, and she made sure that all the children were working, happy, and focused. While I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would’ve liked working with the children, I did spend a lot of time talking to the teacher and learning more about their teaching philosophy. Everything they do there is student based, and I knew I was in a community of people that truly cared about the children they were teaching. It was a place that I would love to work.

After my time in the classroom, I went back to meet with the interviewer and the other candidates. We had a group interview, and this is the part where I got spooked (not unlike a horse). I was interested in working for the organization because I love working with children, and because they were a non-profit- I’m double majoring in English and Organizational Studies, essentially non-profit work. Everyone else at the table was an early-education major, except for one woman, who was an actual full-time teacher in the city. Not only that, but she was working with a school where she was specifically working with students with special needs. I realized early on that while the job description posted online had asked for some pretty basic stuff- the ability to work with children, and to guide them throughout the day- they were looking for people who had experience specifically working with troubled children, in classroom environments. While I have tutored children with a range of emotional problems before, I had never done so in classroom environment. The other candidates, on the other hand, seemed to have been doing so since they were children themselves. I was really intimidated, and on top of the jetlag, I don’t think that some of my answers to the questions asked were the best they can be.

While I may end up not getting the job, I still felt like I learned a lot from the experience. I learned to always, always, always bring a printed résumé to interviews. I learned to never schedule an interview at 9 am the morning after a cross-country flight. I learned that you probably shouldn’t apply to jobs just because they’re at non-profit organizations. I’m hoping that the fact that a Scripps alumnus, who I’ve connected with, is on the Board of Directors may prove beneficial. I’ve been told that I’ll receive my decision shortly, and now, all I have to do is wait.