“Life experience is the new work experience.” – Richie Norton
When I started Praxis we were given a handful of blog posts to write. Now that I have graduated I have decided to rewrite them.
Looking back on my last post I see that I was not giving myself the credit that I deserved. Although my official work experience was slim I had so much more to offer that was not in the post.
I was a dancer
I trained for six years of my life, I put my all into the world. Even though I didn’t pursue it as a career, the lessons it taught me will forever be in my back pocket.
From picking up combinations after seeing them once, to living out the blood, sweat, and tears saying instead of simply saying it, to knowing the correct placement of ribs and hips. Although it might not be necessary to use in everyday life, it will always be there.
I was an associate & an associate trainer at Panera
In the seven months that I was at Panera, I gained more than I ever thought I would. One of the biggest lessons I learned was how my ballet training could be brought into the “real world”.
Due to the fast-paced learning environment that was my dancing career, I was able to pick up new tasks and responsibilities extremely fast. Because of this, I was able to start training people within the first three months of arriving at the store.
I was a marketing apprentice
I don’t know what I was expecting when I signed the six-month contract. Whatever it was corona swooped in, kneed it in the gut, and made sure it didn’t get back up.
Regardless of the unfortunate circumstances that not only I, but many people found themselves in. I learned and got to experience such a wide variety of roles, shoutout to the startup life, that I cherished each and every moment. Through this, I also discovered how poor my communication skills were and that I desperately needed to improve them.
I am a teacher
With experience teaching ballet classes, warm-ups, improv, and more. Teaching msyelf all through high school. I was given a stack of textbooks, test books, and grading books. To this day I help out my siblings with schoolwork. I have learned how empowering it is for the student to make them feel like they did it themselves instead of you doing it for them.
Teaching runs in my family’s blood, my grandma was a teacher in elementary school for years and years. My aunt is a teacher. My mom taught us kids for the majority of our lives.
I am a student
One of the greatest things I have learned is the importance of always being a student. As well as not caring who the teacher is. Just because someone is younger than you does not mean that they know less than you. The same goes for those older than you, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to be full of wisdom.
Always being ready to learn something new, to catch the little drops of wisdom that surround you, to practice what you preach and preach what you practice.
I am a search engine optimization specialist
Although this is a new title I am excited to see where I end up. I’m so grateful that my bosses decided to take the risk of hiring a seventeen-year-old with no actual marketing experience.
I can look back and see how each part of my life was an important, possibly confusing but nevertheless important, step to take. I can only dream of what the future will be, and try to make it become a reality. Right now, I cannot wait to look back a year from now and see how far I have come.