Early in my career as an educator, I was placed as an assistant trainer to a senior trainer in the company I was working at.
The school we were running the programme in had a reputation.
A good one.
When we entered the school, something felt off. I couldn't quite pinpoint it until we commenced class.
Despite the best efforts of the senior trainer, the students refused to settle down and fights nearly broke out at least twice (among the students).
Even the form teacher of the class, who was sitting in, couldn't exert any control. And we had 4 or 5 lessons with them in total.
Later, I heard similar stories from another trainer (from the same company) who was teaching another class in another location in the school.
For obvious reasons, I cannot disclose the identity of the school. It was, to put it mildly, my worst-ever experience of disciplinary problems in a school.
I've heard since then that the situation in the school had improved over the years, but, as I've never been back there, I cannot confirm or deny the truth of this.
The upshot of this is that every other school seems, in comparison, so much better.
Because I always compare potentially bad experiences to this one, I end up being always thankful even when things go slightly awry.
Framing. Such an important thing.
My First Experience in a Part-Time Job Wasn't Great, But it Helped Me Discover What I Wanted and Didn't Want
Having always been a bit different (some say VERY), I naturally gravitated towards the self-employed/freelance/entrepreneur world.
Once I found it, of course.
My first foray into the working world was as a part-time admin assistant in the F&B department of a local country club. It was a holiday job, just before I started studying in Temasek Polytechnic (Biotechnology!)
The job came through an introduction, so I got it pretty easily. And because there were 6 months between getting my O level results and the start of my polytechnic course, I had plenty of time.
I found soon that I likely wasn't entirely needed, because most of the tasks were straightforward and I finished them in short order, thus ending up with a lot of downtime.
One of the tasks was supposed to take over a week, but I got it done in 2 days.
Unfortunately, being in an office environment at a low ranking job, and partly because I was introduced into it, I couldn't look like I had nothing to do even though I really had nothing to do.
This was extraordinarily hard.
I couldn't sit around reading, and there were no modern mobile phones with ready Internet access. The computers here weren't exactly very fast and there just wasn't that much on the Internet in those days anyway.
Within a couple weeks, I was completely bored. I didn't have the autonomy to spend downtime the way I wanted to, and I didn't have anything challenging or interesting to do.
I left after 2 months to preserve my sanity.
I am thankful to the person who got me the job, because I did learn a number of things, and it gave me a number of stories to tell since then.
It also taught me that I needed to find work that I could pour myself into and that I really couldn't stand tedium.
Also, I'm thankful to the person because I earned enough to go LAN gaming every day for the next 4 months (If you remember when this was a huge thing, you're likely of a similar age to me. :p ) before my poly course started.
Yes, I was a gamer. And through gaming, I learned a lot of very useful principles for designing learning programmes (again, a post for another time).
If I could go back in time, I don't think I would have changed this bit of my past, boring though it was. I feel that it had great formative value.
First Time, Last Time? Not If You Have an Expert Guide!
It's scary being a first-timer.
Whether it's joining a new workplace, picking up a new hobby, or putting yourself out there on a social platform, it's all pretty daunting.
There are a thousand things to get wrong, and a thousand eyes watching you do it. At least that's what it feels like.
This is precisely when we need the experts, the old hands, the ones who have "been there, done that".
It's not that we can't figure it out for ourselves.
We just want to make fewer mistakes and rub fewer people the wrong way.