Hey everyone guess what I went to work! Not actually I’m to lazy for that, but I did go to a work, it just wasn’t my work. About a week ago I went to work with my dad on Take your kid to work day. I was tasked with filming my adventure for that day and then writing this blog post about it. For my dad’s work I went to his office downtown and then we went to UBC. At UBC we went to the chemistry labs where some of the testing that is being done for my dad‘s company is happening. Now you’re probably wondering what the heck my dad’s job actually is. In fact he’s the COO of a company called standard lithium (a mining company) and he’s currently creating new technologies for improved ways to extract lithium. Now this maybe Doesn’t sound the most interesting but it’s actually pretty cool. His job involves lots of travelling to cool places and meeting with a lot of really interesting people. It does also involve a lot of writing emails but I guess that’s probably just what being an adult means.

The workplace

Now when I set out on this trip Ms. Willemse told us we would be Trying to learn about three core competencies these were “Question self and others about how individual purposes and passions can support the needs of the local and global community when considering career choices”, “Recognize the impact of personal public identity in the world of work”, and “Recognize and explore diverse perspectives on how work contributes to our community and society”. These were the competencies that drive this project and were the statements that allowed me to come up with interview questions for the video we made. This video was a video showing our trip, and the interview we got with one of the people we met that day.

“Question self and others about how individual purposes and passions can support the needs of the local and global community when considering career choices”

The first competency I’m going to be focussing on is “Question self and others about how individual purposes and passions can support the needs of the local and global community when considering career choices”. This competency was really interesting to me because I know it definitely applies to my father. This competency talks about recognizing how passions and hobbies can fuel career choices and eventually better the community. For instance my father is a climber and that means he adores rocks. We’ll be on a holiday about to go climbing and he’ll point to a seemingly normal rock and just start blabbering about what a beautiful specimen it is. Now this might seem strange (it is) but it very heavily influenced his career choice, because his love of rocks and the things they can do is what brought him into the mining industry and then lithium business. He just really wanted a job where he could be in the outdoors with cool rocks and that’s what he does regularly when he goes and works on the plant he’s currently building. This makes him much better at his job because he’s very interested in what they’re doing. Having a passion that relates to your job to make your job so much easier and more engaging because you’re just so interested in what your doing, and the more interested you are the more you can contribute to your community.

The rock that my dads job is based around

“Recognize and explore diverse perspectives on how work contributes to our community and society”

The next competency is “Recognize and explore diverse perspectives on how work contributes to our community and society” this basically means how can work contribute to our communities. The prime example of this is Jason the UBC Chemistry Professor that I interviewed. Jason is a super cool guy and very interesting person and his job contributes so much to the community. As I said he’s a professor and he spends all his time educating his students. He has the expertise to be making lots of money in the pharmacy industry but instead he stays and teaches people and helps develop more peoples passions in chemistry. He is also working with on a huge new project developing an AI that can revolutionize chemistry. This machine will be able to do advanced chemistry testing for people way faster and more easily. This is also one of Canada‘s first projects relating to the Paris agreement. Jason and his team are developing AI to test a now type of ink that can be applied to windows and general glass to regulate heating and save energy. This is an extremely good example of how a job can contribute to a community and make extremely positive change in an area.

Jason in his natural habitat, the chemistry lab

“Recognize the impact of personal and public identity in the world of work“

Our final competency is “Recognize the impact of personal public identity in the world of work”. This competency confused me a little bit at first but I soon got a handle on it. It essentially means how does your identity or the image you project about yourself to the world affect your working. Now when I thought about this I instantly thought about social media. In the digital world that we live in today a lot of your identity is made up of your presence online. Now I know for a fact that lots of businesses have social media accounts and things like that but I’ve never really known any of my parents company’s to have accounts. So when I asked Jason about his social media presence I was kind of surprised to hear that they do have social media. And that it’s incredibly important for spreading their news and achievements. They have a couple people who even manage the social media as like a job and regularly send out alerts and messages to keep their image up. This was really interesting to me because although I know a lot of people who have social media. It’s not usually for business purposes. But after talking to Jason I understand just how important maintaining a good public image is. It can bring you customers, new students, or people to fund your projects. It’s really important to maintain a good image even if you aren’t in a job as well, because it could one day get you that job.

Overall I learned a lot from this experience. I got to see what it’s like to be in a work place with working adults who are actually making money. The sort of expectations they have there and how it’s so different to school. People dress differently, act more maturely, and everyones so interested in what they’re doing. They want to be there and that’s different to school but really cool to see. I learned a lot more about jobs in general and the sort of things you would do on a day to day basis that might not be that interesting. I got a glimpse of a world that I will have to be a part of one day and it seems pretty cool. I had a super fun time at Take Your Kid To Work Day and I certainly learned a lot.

Do zobaczenia później!

(See you later in polish)

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