My First Job (soft skills)

 

    My first job was definitely an interesting experience for a sixteen-year-old girl. I worked at a daycare with children as young as one to eight years old. I was considered a floater because I was under eighteen. I worked in all the classrooms throughout the day. My other coworkers were assigned a classroom and had their own kids they were in charge of. Now starting this job, I did not have nearly the number of soft skills that I developed with just a few months from working at a daycare. Soft skills aren't just skills for the workplace, they are everyday life skills. 10 Soft Skills You Need to Succeed | Strayer University For starters, I was one of the youngest employees, so I was determined to be friends with my coworkers regardless of age. Some of my employees were married, had kids, or engaged and I was just a high school kid who just got their driver's license. A soft skill I learned was agility. I was not only juggling multiple classrooms with different ages of students, but I was also trying to figure out how to be friends with my coworkers who I thought I had nothing in common with. 

    The best piece of advice I was given for this situation was to ask questions and listen. I am a talker; I can talk all day about any subject I like or dislike. This was going to be a challenge for me to listen and learn. Not only to my coworkers but to the children as well. I made friends with one of the older women at work, she worked in the baby room, and I would go in and help with dippers. I started asking her questions like how she ended up in Alaska or about her husband and her granddaughter. After a few days she started opening up to me and started telling me about her childhood. She had told me she never graduated high school but was so proud of me for sticking to it. About two years later I gave her my graduation announcement and I swear I saw a tear. 

    I learned a lot from my coworkers not just about making work friends, but I learned a lot about having patience with kids. One of the hardest things for me is letting a child finish a sentence that is just taking five minutes longer than it needs to be. I started actively practicing patience and trust me it was a struggle. One of my students' dad had passed away leaving everyone at work grieving with him. He would walk around sad and didn’t want to talk or play with anyone. I watched one of my coworkers hold him at nap time and he just started talking. He was talking about a movie he watched and then what he ate for dinner. Then he started crying telling my coworker what his dad's favorite song was. That is when I learned that patience and listening are the two most important soft skills to have to interact with at any age. These aren't just skills to be a good employee, these are skills to be a better human.