Reflections from the Grade 10 Career Exploration Week

The Grade 10 students had a Career Exploration Week from April 10-13. They worked in cyber security, sales, marketing, design, tourism, hotels, financial trading, education, and at a bird park. They discovered what they liked, what they disliked, what they were good at and what they felt awkward doing. Below you can read some of their reflections.

I learned that I am a good communicator, a social person and well-balanced in the field of marketing.

Going to work everyday was very exciting for me.

I learned that some jobs can be really hard to do, such as shopkeepers & security need lots of patience.

At first I was nervous about everything and everyone. I was shy and I was in my shell, but with time I grew in confidence and I felt more like myself, like I am in front of my friends. Talking to customers boosted my confidence as well as my communication skills.

I learned that in some situations we need to find things to do ourselves instead of waiting for others come to us.

I really loved my work experience. I thought it was one of the best things I had ever done. I learned so much about birds and how a park like this one operates. I will miss working there and may possibly go back to see if I can try out a bird training course so I can improve my skills with birds, understanding them and their behavior much better.

I learned that, as a leader, making your peers feel involved in work is a must-have quality and skill. Not only will it make your team feel valued, but it will also make them want to produce better work and continue working with you.

Sometimes, you just have to do what you are told to do by your superiors, even if you don’t like it, and you’re just going to have to get used to it. It was at this point where I came to my senses, and remembered that working office jobs isn’t all fun and games.

I did develop my leadership skills because I had to make sure that the kids respected me and actually followed directions that were given to them.

I was uncomfortable with doing an assignment I did not know how to do, nor had any idea on how to do it, but I was still glad I tried in the end. This was one of the lessons I took away from the experience; giving it a try.

I can see myself doing this job, or a similar one to this, as I enjoy the creative aspect of the career, the collaboration, and the actual process of creating a production.

The main lesson that I learned from this week is to really choose to do what you love and enjoy doing, otherwise you will spend a large time of your life, hating what you do which is not something that I want in my life.

I now know that I 100% do not care for the hospitality industry.

From this experience I learned that I should speak up quicker if I am in a situation that I have questions about.

I felt really happy and excited to learn something new that may affect my future. However, it is not easy to learn lots of new things in a day and at the end of the day I felt confused and tired.

What I learned so far is how to create entertaining, engaging and creative classrooms that promote learning as well as social, cognitive and emotional development.

My supervisor said that the soft skills in developing a relationship are very important in this job, as they help clients feel more trust in you and what you do with their money. This was a very useful thing to learn, because in the future a robot can do the job but a robot cannot develop relationships.

I enjoyed communicating with the customers saying “Hi” and getting to know them as I would put a smile on the customers’ faces and get them into a positive mood.

I learned that I was good at having a positive attitude, at collaborating with other staff, I was polite, well prepared most of the time, honest, and was good at being organized, cooperative and punctual.

The thing that excited me the most was the fact that I was working at something related to computers, which is one of my favorite fields of study. I learned that computers are very complicated and that they require a lot of learning before actually doing something productive with them.