Learning from the young and old.

Since I started my journey, polishing my resume and looking for full-time work, I’ve learned and observed a few things from people younger and older then me. I am currently employed as a substituted teacher and as a scorer for a company that scores those assessment tests that we have all taken and your kids have or will take during their educational career. I don’t consider these jobs stable or financially stable jobs. For one reason, you just don’t know when they will call you to come in to work and second their can be gaps when they have no work for you to do.

Working these two jobs, I’ve have observer and learned some things about working with people older then me and younger. Let first start with working with younger people. In these case being a substitute teacher and having to deal with teenagers is a challenge, but one that you can learn a lot from. If want to improve on your public speaking skills, substituting can help you. Not the best way to work on your public speaking skills, but what more challenging then trying to get the attention of 20 plus students all trying to ask you, are you married, do you have a girl/boyfriend, how old are, do you know Spanish, and whatever other question they can come up with influenced by those hormones. Of course you need to think about how you want to word your answer before telling them, such as if you know Spanish. If you are like me, who can understand it but can’t speak it, I tell students they don’t need to know and then surprise them when they are talking about something they don’t want me to know about. This is great way to practice that ability to think before you speak. Working as substitute teacher, I’ve have learned and practiced my skills in explaining things because these students will come up with a excuse to not do their assignment such as, “I don’t know how to do this” or “our teacher hasn’t reviewed this assignment with us.” The best thing you learn from being a substitute teacher is you now know that you are “GUILITY” for how you acted when you were a teenage and there was substitute teacher in the classroom. Now you understand what they go through and the question that will pop in your head, we weren’t that bad when we were at the age. Kind of funny how things come full circle.

Working with older people or in my case people who retired, you will learn what to expect and look forward to when you have reach that point in your life. For example, one time during lunch a co-work of mine whose just 3 or 4 years older then me, we sat with a few other people who are retired. All of sudden we find ourselves in conversation about health and death related issues. One woman said she was happy and excited that she finally paid off her cremation arrangement for when she dies. She had a smile on her face like if it was a life time accomplishment. Of courses there were a lot of other death related issues such as life insurance, where and who you are going to be buried. It was kind of weird seating at the table and hearing all of these things. Since am still young and have yet to think about those thing, I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there staring at my other friend.