What I learned about the Road to Success

Hi Everyone! My name is Stephanie Fu and I am a Grade 10 student attending Alexander Mackenzie High School. Today, I had the pleasure to attend the Illuminate x North York Regional Conference. Here is my blog which strives to highlight what I learned about time management, collaboration, and choosing and understanding careers and career paths.

"The purpose of our life is to be Happy" - Dalai Lama

The Case Study

In the case study, I learned a lot about collaboration and time management. Collaboration and teamwork was key to a successful prompt, as everyone on my team was expected to rely on each other if we wanted to achieve the best results.

Next was time management, since the group was given a time limit of 1 hour, we were expected to manage our time wisely in order to finish the case on time. At the beginning we had taken our time, maybe spent a bit too much time researching and thinking about any sort of problems and their solutions before we went on to prepare our presentation. This taught me that, especially if there is a time frame, to properly manage time. Set certain time limits for each category or idea before moving on to the next one.

Keynote speakers

This morning’s activity that was hosted by Dan Kierman was extremely helpful for me as I have been having trouble with choosing a career path. I learned that there are three steps to finding a career:

1. Reflect

2. Discover

3. Activate

This will definitely assist me in the future when I am looking more into depth for jobs or a career path to pursue.

The workshop Dan Kierman introduced was learning how to compose an elevator pitch. This was demonstrated with three tips, the three C’s as he had called it.

1. Context

2. Credibility

3. Call to action

Dan had given examples of how he used these steps, one being him in the present time, and the other as him in the past time as a student. I was then put into a breakout room with 2 other students and tried the steps out for myself. I believe that this will be very helpful for me when I am in an interview or just introducing myself to someone new.

Next was the keynote from Swish Goswami. This was definitely interesting to me as he had taken a career pathway that is not usually recommended by friends and family. I learned that in life, our passions can change which can lead to many different career paths and jobs. I also learned that there is no right or wrong career path to achieve a successful job.

I learned that it is important, not only to have the best grades, but to have the most connections and relationships to those in the field that you are pursuing. For example, if you wanted to go into law, talk to someone who is a lawyer and what the job is really like.

Conclusion

I am very thankful for the opportunity I was given and I strongly recommend this program to anyone who might be struggling with or has questions about jobs and career paths. I look forward to applying the skills and knowledge I gained from this conference to the outside world. If I could share one piece of advice about leadership after NHLC, it would be, make sure you listen and trust each and every one of your teammates, and manage your time wisely because time does fly when you’re having fun.

Remember, there is no set down career path, if your passions change and you want to change roads, that's okay, pick up your bike and start pedaling down the new road towards a new journey.