Work Experience: Rewarding Aspects Of My Life

Growing up, my mother used to say your work and class experience are a critical component, but rewarding aspect of your life. My sister and I now understand how work experience allows you to learn, build and recognize knowledge, values and power persistent in the workplace. My middle-class family consisted of my mother, father, sister and I living in Kingston, Ontario. As the oldest child growing up in middle-class, there were challenges my sister faced. Majority of young females in our city wait eagerly for the day they can turn babysitting into cash. But for my sister, there was no cash and hanging out with her friends on the weekend quickly changed to babysitting her younger sister. Regardless, my twenty-four-year-old sister says she is grateful for every trait my parents taught and the

My sister and I were raised to stand by our moral and ethic values and learned to be independent, kind and loving. Through her life, she has worked in precarious employment. Precarious work encompasses “forms of work characterized by limited social benefits and statutory entitlements, job insecurity, low wages, and high risks of ill-health”. My sister attended elementary to secondary school working a part-time job then continued at St. Lawrence College for her Bachelors of Psychology degree through Laurentian University and is now a Psychometrist at Correctional Service of Canada. My sister has experienced both positive and negative moments in her precarious work life. Her first job was in highschool in the hospitality services at a retirement home. My sister was fifteen when she started and seventeen when she quit. My sister witnessed and experienced many things while working for this union. Although it was a temporary job, there were higher expectations at such a young age. Her work schedule would be irregular and consisted of long hours which at most times conflicted with her