My First Job

A while ago on twitter there was a trend where people would list their first five jobs, I found it difficult to answer that question as I've had a lot of jobs that I wouldn't consider my "job" as such because they were part time or because they were things I did temporarily.  To make a list here of everything would give away a lot about my personal life which I'm not willing to do right now, but I wanted to take the idea and make a post inspired by it.  This post is about the first job I ever had, and by that I mean no excuses no exemptions, literally the first job I ever did for an actual employer.

I can't remember how old I was at the time but I was still in high school, nearing the end of my time there, as part of one of the core subjects we had to complete we needed to find work placements where we would spend time working full time rather than attending school.  I was probably 15 at the time and the company I went to work for was a sign-writing company.

The first thing I learned how to do when I worked there was how to design, print, and apply a vinyl transfer; this involved using Computer Aided Design [CAD] software that would create a template for the sign by using colour layers to build the sign on screen.  The template would then be cut by a cutting machine that would scour the coloured layers into coloured sheets of vinyl.  Each vinyl sheet then had to be stripped of the waste which was done by hand using an etching knife to peel away the waste vinyl.  You'd be left with a sheet of vinyl that only had the parts of the sign in that colour still on its surface.  One by one you would align each sheet with the surface it was to be applied to, spray it with adhesive, smooth it out on the surface then peel the vinyl off again which if you did it right would leave the coloured vinyl on the sign.

I've always been interested in using computing in different ways, and seeing the combination of design and application fascinated me.  This was really something that drove me towards software development as I wanted to create that kind of software.  In the end I didn't pursue that career path but it was interesting to see.

During my time working at the sign-writers I also got to work with metalwork, designing and assembling the metal frames for 3D fabrications that would be the basis for more elaborate designs.  I also got to work with engraving machines and gained a better understanding of how everything was done that I really had never actually though about up until that point.  I've written before about the nature of design, and how everything in our lives has been created by design right down to the letter T you see on your screen right now, that font had to be designed and much more effort goes into it than you would think.  This moment was rather analogous for me to the scene in Devil Wears Prada where Andy is shot down by Miranda for thinking she's exempt from the influence of the fashion industry when in reality everything she was wearing was the result of millions of dollars of industry.  I gained an understanding from that young age that nothing you use that has been manufactured is exempt from the design process, someone somewhere had to think about it and design it before it could be made for you to use.

If you've ever endured the countless courses and training programmes designed to help you find a job, one of the things you probably hate hearing is the idea of transferable skills and non-transferable skills, mostly because it seems like a concept that is so obvious that you don't feel like you need to spend hours sitting in a classroom listening to someone explain its importance to you.

What those concepts teach though is something that some of us embrace and some of us fight against, and that is the idea that everything in life happens for a reason.  Some people feel comfortable with that idea but a lot of people don't because they feel that accepting it would imply they have no free will, when in reality that's not what is being conveyed by this mentality.  In my view what is being conveyed is that every experience you have in life can teach you something, no matter how mundane you may think it is, there is something to be learned from the experience.  Does that mean that you have no free will?  No, obviously not, all that it means is that you can learn something from everything you do, every choice you make has a motivation sometimes we understand it when we make it, sometimes we don't understand it until long after, and in some cases we never understand why we made those choices at all.  Whatever the situation you find yourself in, you made a choice, even if you were forced into that choice, and you witness the consequence.  Those two things can teach you a lot if you are willing to disarm yourself and look at those choices with a critical mindset and really begin to examine them.

Every job I ever had taught me something, either about myself, about the world, about the field of work that I was employed to do, or about people in general.  I don't like to refer to these lessons as skills because the truth is most of the time they are not skills, they are simply the elevation of your awareness of a given truth that is self evident that is presented to you in that moment.  Learning about how people interact with each other, the limits of their abilities, how they handle stress and pressure, the physical, mental, and emotional cost of any given task, these are all things you can learn but they aren't considered skills, nevertheless they are self evident if you are willing to open your eyes and observe.

I never pursued a career relating to the work I did for the sign-writing company, but much more than that, what I find interesting is that in my professional career as it stands, I've never really done the same job twice, apart from retail which I did a number of times always part time in addition to some other focus, usually studying.  Once I learned all that I could from the experience I moved on to something else that would help me continue to grow as a person and gain a deeper understanding of the world.  I realise for some that may sound trite or even contrived but the truth is, knowledge is what has driven me most in life, ever since I was a child I wanted to know everything about everything - of course I realised that was an impossible task so in the end I decided to learn as much as I could about everything I had an interest in and learn a bit about anything and everything else when I had the opportunity, my career path has been part of that mentality, throughout its entirety I have sought to learn what I could when I could from whoever I could.

I don't really have an ending to this post quite simply because it deals with a topic that I don't think has come to an end yet for me - my career.  There will be more for me to do, and I don't really know what that will bring or where it will lead me, all that I do know is that I will continue to approach it with the same mentality as before, to soak up as much information as I can and learn everything that I can in the process.

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