Where Are You From?

Thomas A. Murray

I have had many jobs in my life. My first job — well, the first one I got paid for — was keeping the scorebooks for my elementary school basketball league when I was 12 years old. One year I worked at a printing shop and I am still brought back there in my mind when I smell freshly printed materials. I spent a great deal of time working in various retail establishments during high school, college, and while in graduate school. One summer I even worked at a locally-owned amusement park, starting as a small ride operator and then quickly promoted to drive the diesel train. And, of course, there were those four and half years I spent as a server, host, bartender, and trainer for the Olive Garden. On the surface, none of these jobs I have had are “relevant work experience” in relation to my current career as an educator.

However, all of these jobs were in fact relevant work experiences because I was able to learn from each of them. I learned attention to detail while keeping score — those basketball games got quite heated at times and accurate record keeping was essential. I learned a lot about teamwork at the Olive Garden working with other servers, bussers, hosts, cooks, and dishwashers; on the other hand, I learned to be able to work independently at the print shop where I was given various projects with minimal supervision. Driving a diesel train helped me develop a number of skills, including crisis management (bad things can happen when you do not keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times). I even had my first real-world lesson in racial profiling interacting with the “Loss Prevention” department at one of my retail jobs — they would only dispute transactions when the customer was not white. What do all of these work experiences of mine have in common? Their relevance to me was gained by my reflecting on them. Working at the Olive Garden is “just a job” until you spend time reflecting on your experience, thinking about what you’ve learned and how you can apply that learning in the future.

This is true for other experiences I’ve had — whether it was a class in school or selling candy bars for a school fundraiser. All of these experiences — “where I’m from” in the broadest sense — have meaning because I have given them meaning. Before you start to look at what comes next in your lifelong learning journey, we are going to take a little bit of time to look back and think about where you came from — the experiences that have shaped you.

Questions to consider as you read Part 1:

• What have been some of your most important learning moments, either academic learning or learning that occurred outside the classroom?
• What has been your experience reflecting on and making meaning of these learning moments?
• What are some examples of things you have experienced that seem “not relevant” on the surface but have greater significance upon reflection?