The Jabberwock

I feel that I was able to learn more at work than I was able to learn at school because not only was work optional, but it allowed me to learn how to gain experience, learn new skills that I would apply to myself on a daily basis, and build relationships with other people, where I learned to interact more and come out of my shell.

Getting to experience having a job in the summer for the first time in 2022, it allowed me to learn so much about how I’m able to improve in many areas in my life, including social skills, problem solving, self-awareness, and many more life skills in general. One day, when I was at work, I had to learn about how accepting constructive criticism is important and how it would benefit me in the future. I was assigned with my coworkers to write an essay for this program who was looking to recruit young teens to participate in some activities where we would learn about future career opportunities and discuss more about what our future would look like. As we worked together maintaining our calm presence, they noticed that I wasn’t quite writing things properly on the document and that it didn’t look as professional as you would expect. It looked as if I was just slacking. The reason for this was because I didn’t have an idea on how to start, as we all were assigned our own parts in the essay to do. Because of this, it caused one of the workers to pull me outside of the room, and they talked to me about how I hadn’t been putting in much effort and trying my hardest in a respectful and kind manner. I appreciated them discussing that with me, especially since they were one of my dearest friends. I explained to them that I was struggling, and they offered to help and provided me with some constructive criticism on how I could improve my part in the essay and make it more advanced. They also offered to help me. This allowed me to learn how receiving some constructive criticism definitely gave me space to improve from what is wrong and get better from my mistakes. It also impacted me and taught me that providing constructive criticism is a good thing to give out to other people in this world to help them improve as well.

Just these skills could help shape your life differently and help you manage your self-improvement to make yourself a better person. Not only this, but we go to school to get an education on a daily basis, and although that’s essential as we go to become more academically knowledgeable every day, it doesn’t prepare us for the way the real world operates and how maturing and growing every day is also a key to success.

Additionally, this experience also allowed me to learn the value and meaning of hard work, where I was able to actually experience the classic cliche: hard work always pays off. It opened doors to so many opportunities for the next summer and I was able to make a huge amount of money in the matter of three months. Applying the life skills that I mentioned are also an example of the hard work that I put in, and I believe that the big takeaway it taught me is to always remain determined and motivated. To conclude, I was able to learn more at work than I did in the classroom. Going to school on a daily basis allows me to learn and academically and memorize and retain significant information, but it doesn’t truly teach me about my life and how I present yourself to the world – how to improve my interactions with others and how to work on becoming a better me by applying these crucial life skills. My job definitely did, which benefited me in so many ways and it allowed me to view things from a whole new perspective, whole new mindset, and focus on growing and learning how to become a better version of myself.