Summary
Most students come to college because they want a meaningful job when it’s all done. What does that look like from an Indigenous perspective? In this episode, Alice speaks to Eli, an Indigenous student from our Social Service Worker Program, and his Indigenous Studies professor, Dani Kwan-Lafond. Eli also works at Egale Youth Services, an LGBTQ youth support organization, and grew up in foster care, while Dani is also a social worker. To Eli, career resilience means being allowed to dream, have hopes and push forward, without getting sidetracked. The pair also talk about the importance of connections, and when to change your career’s direction.
Alice: Welcome everyone to Episode five of the Career Resilience Podcast Series. My name is Alice Hsiung and I am the coordinator for Career Services here at Centennial College. I’m honoured to have the opportunity to learn about the Indigenous Perspective on Career Resilience. Today, I will be speaking with Eli, a student from Centennial’s Social Service Worker program, and his professor, Dani Kwan-Lafond.
Podcast Intro: The career journey is rarely linear. It is full of twists and turns. Because of this, we know that the transition from school to work can feel scary, uncertain, and challenging. To address this, we've developed this podcast series to chat about career resilience with guest speakers to show that you are not alone on this journey. Career resilience is the mindset that allows people to pursue their career goals and bounce back, pivot, and thrive. When confronted with challenges such as difficult job search, a failed school program, job loss and changes, or career uncertainty. In this podcast series, we will focus on five skills that allow us to thrive when unexpected events happen. They are curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism, and risk taking.
Alice: Thank you so much for joining me today. Perhaps you can tell us a little bit about yourselves.
Eli: Sure. Hi, I'm Eli. I'm in the SSW program here at Centennial College. I grew up in foster care, so being in this program means a lot to me because I want to change the way foster care is. And I currently work at Egale Youth Services, which is an LGBT organization.
Dani: My name is Dani. I'm a prof in the Indigenous Studies Stackable Credentials, which is changing its name this year, but it's the same program. And so I've been here for a few years, and as of September I'll be the Program Coordinator. I'm also a former Social Worker. Before I was a prof that's what I did. And I also have experiences in my own life with both homelessness and living in care as well.
Alice: Well thank you so much to both of you for joining us today. I'm sure that we'll be inspired and motivated and touched probably by the stories that you're about to share with us today. So the first question I wanted to ask you, as you know, most students come to Centennial College because they want to get a meaningful job, a meaningful career, when they leave. And that's why we're on this topic of career resilience today, and we really want to find out from the Indigenous perspective how does that affect you, what has that looked like so far in your lives? So the first question is what does career resilience mean to you?
Eli: For me, career resilience means not giving up. You're allowed to dream and have hopes and you have to push forward and keep pushing yourself so that you can achieve them and not allow yourself to get sidetracked fully or to allow yourself to slip into any kind of consuming emotion of negativity. You want to push through and follow your dreams.
Alice: I really like that. I think a lot of Centennial students, when they come to college at the beginning, they have a certain goal in mind. When I graduate from college, this is the job that I want. And I think as they go through the career journey, maybe a two year program, post grad program, whatever it may be at the college, sometimes things become difficult and challenging, right? The demands of school. And you mentioned, Eli, that you have a part time job as well. So balancing between school and work can be quite challenging. But keeping that end goal in mind will hopefully help you sort of to achieve that later on. So thanks for sharing that. How about you Dani?
Dani: I would say for me, career resiliency is about being very flexible and being open to do work that I'm interested in, but that might not be the job title that I thought I would have. I've done everything from I've worked in fast food, and retail, and I was a tour guide for many years, which I never thought I would do, but ended up being a fantastic job that taught me things like public speaking that I'm still using today in my teaching job. And I think back about those tour guiding years and how it now serves me. I've waitressed, I've done lots of different kind of social service work, community worker jobs. I've started charities and done a number of projects. And so for me it's about always keeping my ear open and asking people questions when I hear, you know, this person has this really weird job that exists that I've never heard. That's a job? How did you do that? And trying to pick up on making those connections and just being open to trying new things. I ended up teaching because I had a friend of a friend who was doing this and thought, hey, you like talking. You could talk and they can't interrupt you. That could be your job. And so I ended up teaching a class as a TA in university very haphazardly and not thinking it would be something that I ended up as a career. But yeah, just being open to change. And I see it always as moving forward, but change is okay.
Alice: I like the message that you're sharing, that it's okay and it's a good idea to be flexible, and to be curious, and take chances, take risks. Because you never know where this one opportunity, this one gig, might lead you to next. Right? And I think a lot of students might kind of feel, sometimes they think, oh, I'm looking for a part time job. It's not necessarily related to my current program of study. And you also have to kind of alluded to the idea of transferable skills.
Dani: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes.
Alice: So you're a professor right now, your previous job as a tour guide allowed you to develop these public speaking skills and interpersonal skills, which is wonderful for next jobs. And I think as students we have to keep that in mind. Whatever we're doing, whether it's in the classroom or extracurricular activities or part time jobs, they all help us to grow and learn and move forward.
Dani: Exactly.
Alice: That's great. So the next thing I wanted to ask you is, so suppose there's a time in your life, and we all go through ups and downs in our lives, something didn't quite work out the way that you had hoped. What did you do and what did you learn from it?
Eli: So my most recent experience would be, I originally went to school to be a hairstylist before coming to Centennial, and I loved it. It seems like a great career and it's something I'd like to get back into later. But the job opportunities for it are kind of scarce. A lot of places don't want to pay you what you're worth. And so instead of allowing myself to just be sad that I couldn't find a job in that field, I've put it on the back burner. It's something I'm still going to pursue later on in life because I want to tie it into social service work. So for me, coming back to school and deciding that this is what I wanted to do was really helpful, and I've learned a lot. My sister went to school for social service work, and so when I was telling her that I wanted to go back to school, she pushed me for social service work because of my experiences and my personality. She was like, you'd be great for this. So I took that chance, and I feel I've learnt a lot from just letting myself understand that not all careers will work out, and it doesn't mean it's your fault or anything like that. It's just how it is sometimes.
Alice: Yeah. I really like that you mentioned basically the idea of being open to having different options. Right? You might have plan one, the ideal dream job, and if that doesn't quite work out that way for you maybe in this moment in your life, you can come back to it later on, maybe somehow combine different options. Many of us have multiple talents, multiple interests as well, right? So being flexible, which is what Dani talked about earlier, that's great. How about Dani? What have you learned or what did help you overcome a challenging situation?
Dani: So I think what I try to think about is that even opportunities that don't work out, like we live in a world that talks about failure, and oh you failed that program, or you quit that thing, but well you moved on from that thing because you realized it wasn't a good fit for you. And so I think that's really important. I'm a high school dropout, never finished high school. And I dropped out of, I'm going to say five, it could be six, it could be seven, college or university programs before I finally found something that worked for me. And so I still have Fs hanging out at the bottom of my transcript to this day, and yet I went on to win the Vanier, which is the biggest doctoral scholarship in Canada, and now I'll finish a PhD. So you have to learn to not see those as failures, but to see them as like, okay, I tried that, that didn't work. Awesome. Now I know. And so now I'm going in this other direction. Yeah, and to just keep working until you can find something that fits. It has to be a good fit for your life and your personality. And so, yeah, so keep looking. There are no mistakes, and that when things don't work out, I've learned something from that. And so I've had students who've left the program, and it's not a failure. It's like, great, now you know that this wasn't the right fit for you, and you take what worked and you make a new decision about a new program. But because you didn't finish, so what? So onward and forward, you know? And you take what you can and you move forward with that. And so for lots of people, it's a real gift to know, okay, it didn't work out in first year. Better that you know that now than four years down the road. And for me, a number of things happened that I didn't finish high school, but I look back and think I would never be where I am now if I hadn't had those experiences and ended up in university in a very different way.
Alice: So knowing yourself is really important. What you like, what you're good at. And I think it's so inspirational, and thank you so much for being so candid and honest sharing that you dropped out of high school and you tried to so many different programs. I'm very curious, if you don't mind sharing, what are some things, something concrete, that you might have done to actually help you to kind of move forward, to propel you to move forward from being a high school dropout to winning the scholarship?
Dani: So I'll say that having support is incredibly important. So I'm going to be political, but I was politicized because of Mike Harris, because he canceled a program that I had access to as a teenager. And I was like, wait, wait, they can just cancel my program? The government can do that? What do you mean, four weeks? We have four weeks and our money runs out? You know, that kind of thing. And being aware of like, okay, wait. Maybe it matters who I vote for. Maybe I need to go vote. I mean, I would been just around that age that I probably could have started voting, but was very unaware of the system. But that was a real awakening of how systems impact real people, and it was me. And so realizing I needed to get better at knowing what was out there and making use of those supports. So I ended up making good use of social service programs that helped me get where I was, and I had good social workers. I come from a family that my mom was an immigrant to this country, and so she doesn't know these systems, right? So like many of my students, our parents can't tell us what university to go to. They don't know this place. They're figuring it out. And so I needed to find Canadian services that would figure that out and point me in the right direction. So that was huge. And so I ended up in that field. But I tell my students all the time, there are programs and services, and it is hard to go out and to open that door and to make an appointment or to make that phone call, but you can't do this alone. And so I am never a bootstraps story. I will never go and do the thing of like, I made it because I worked so hard. Uh-huh (negative). No, I made it cause lots of awesome people helped me, you know? And there were services and programs that some of our kids can't access today because we've canceled them, you know? And that's very real.
Alice: Thank you so much for sharing that. And I'm sure all the wonderful hard workers that work in the community appreciate your appreciation for their work. And I want to mention being both of you having a social background, social service background, the importance of self-advocacy, right? And learning about the government and what you can do. Any one of us should use our own rights to try to advocate for ourselves, for things that matter to us. And I want to also mention that as Centennial students, maybe start within the college, right?
Dani: Absolutely.
Alice: There's so many resources, a wonderful staff faculty on campus, who will be more than happy to support you, guide you, refer you to the right services, whether it's within the college or in the community as well. So definitely take advantage of that.
Dani: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Our college is exceptional in the supports that we have for students. It wasn't in place when I was in university, and so I do encourage our students to make that appointment, go down. It's right here. It's included. And it's something that we know as a college, as faculty, we know how hard we work to have those systems in place. But sometimes it can still be hard for students to make that first step. But it's right here where they're already going to school. So I think it's really important.
Alice: Yeah, because academic success, it's not just about getting straight A's, but it's being involved whether it's on campus, off campus, and then utilizing all the resources like the whole village and the whole community can help you to succeed.
Dani: Exactly, exactly, yes.
Alice: Okay. Wonderful. So related to the question I asked you earlier, what has been some concrete specific strategies or practical strategies that you have used so far to help you stay resilient during the changes and transitions in your own career journeys?
Eli: So as Dani mentioned, having a really strong connection and social network really plays a big part in being able to keep yourself resilient and keep yourself strong. If you have a positive support group, it's a lot easier to feel like you can go talk to someone. Because it is really hard as a student to want to reach out of your comfort zone and go talk to someone who's a complete stranger. But if you have professors that are telling you you're doing great, but this might help a little bit, then it helps you feel a lot better, and it really gives you a better mindset ongoing to talk to people. Because we are a society where sometimes it's still frowned upon to get help because people don't want to have to need help. But we do. We need other humans. And so knowing the resources are there, and then having a professor just be like, maybe this would help you in this way, or I would recommend this for this reason, it really does play a big part in that. And then also being able to have your classmates or your family or just your friends outside of college to be able to talk to and explain how you're feeling and what's going on, it's a big impact, and it definitely makes for a more positive mindset.
Alice: Yeah, I actually echo everything that you've said, Eli. We cannot undermine the importance of social supports, right? And I think here, again, on campus, we are lucky that there's so many social clubs, student clubs, on campus. Some of them are academic driven, and then there are other ones that are more social interest groups. And you may belong to one, I'm not sure, but definitely there's so many ways, in addition to reaching out to your faculty, to the advisors on campus, there's many, many ways that people can build a support around themselves. That's great. So thanks for that. How about Dani? What strategies might you have use to help you stay resilient?
Dani: I would say staying positive, also finding activities that take my mind off of all of the heavy stuff of life. So I play music on the side, and it's really loud, and so I can't think about anything else when I'm doing that. I play drums. Yeah, so that's really good because takes my mind and head space away from that. As indigenous people, we also participate in ceremony, and so everybody needs to find whatever their ceremony is, whatever their people are or their culture is, or whatever works for them. We have to figure out a way to take care of yourself, so I think that that's part of it. Yeah, and so finding whatever works. For me, it's music, and other people, and, yeah, relaxing kind of fun activities, and trying to stay positive about the big picture. I think like, Eli, I tend to be a naturally kind of positive and optimistic person, and I think that's served me well. I think some people have to work harder to find that, but I think it's worth the effort. For me, I think like Eli, I completely agree with, yeah, what he said about people, right? That it's about people. And so for me it's networking, and I try to pass that on to my students. You never know who you're going to talk to today who will remember you in five years. As a social worker, I've had things happen where I had a client who had a kid and I helped their kid 10 years ago, and 10 years down the road I ended up with a job or a gig or something because they remembered that. You know? And so you never know who you're talking to and what the connections are. And for students, they connect with each other. Eli was on an amazing trip that we run at the college called FLIP Trips that are similar to GCELEs, but a slightly different model. And so there's this amazing group of students who now are all in the same stage of life and who will maintain those connections. And I look back at the people I went to university with 20 years ago. Some of us are working here together. You know? So those networks really matter. It's work to maintain relationships, but it's worth it. Not in the sense of using people for connections, because I've been able to give that back as well. And so, yeah, human beings, that's why we're here.
Alice: We should all be helping each other out.
Dani: Yeah, exactly.
Alice: And then I guess you probably know, both of you know, a lot of jobs are not necessarily openly publicized on company websites or on public job posting sites, so having a good network with you really definitely helps you to advance your career to the next steps.
Dani: Yep.
Alice: Okay.
Dani: Yeah, I've said to students like Eli as well that I think nine out of ten jobs I've had in my life, I have not had from putting a job application in. I've had it because somebody let me know that it was opening up or I had an in. And we know that that's how it works and that networks are so important for our careers. And so I try really hard to network my students as well. So Eli was able to connect with some of the people that I knew in the community and land a placement. And we need to do that for each other, especially in minority communities.
Eli: We need a little bit of a stepping stone.
Alice: Yes. And some of these networks could become your mentor to coach you along the way to the future.
Dani: Exactly.
Alice: Yeah. So I really like your suggestions as well. So staying positive is definitely really, really important, because we know life is always up and down. And I like what you said about finding something that works for you, and there's no one strategy for resilience that fits for everybody. Right? So having that balance in life so that we can sort of recharge ourselves and keep going, it's really important. So thanks for sharing that. So both of you mentioned that, you know, I think naturally, innately, you have this positive personality. Is there something specific, maybe people in your lives, or maybe situations, or maybe some mantra in your life that helps you to continue to maintain this positive attitude during your career journey?
Eli: So for me it's allowing myself to feel my emotions and allowing myself to get upset with things. And then taking the time to sit and reflect on how I'm feeling is a big part in what allows me to be positive. But also as an Indigenous person, I like to smudge and reach out to people in my community just to like talk and have that positive energy in that positive space to allow me to breathe and relax, as well as taking my mind off of stressors from school will definitely help. I like to paint and I have pets at home. I have a dog and a few cats. So they really help to just pet them and de-stress.
Alice: The counseling department on campus like to bring dogs on campus, the Paws for Stress.
Eli: Yes. Yes.
Alice: That's wonderful. You've named so many practical strategies already. I'd love to see the smudging sometime. How about you, Dani?
Dani: Yeah, same thing. And I think something to think about is that different things will work for different people in different times in their life. And I say in class, people suffer in different ways, and people need to heal in different ways. And so at a different time in my life I would have done something totally different, and now I enjoy playing music, I run. So you got to figure out what works, but being flexible with that too, that you're not the same person at 20 as you are at 40. And so what fixed you when you were 20 might not be the fix when you're 40. So figuring that out as you go through life, as well. And I think, just as a person who's, I'm pretty political in how I look at the world, and so being very grateful for just where I ended up in life. We're pretty lucky to be here, relatively speaking. And so that helps me stay positive, just to remember life is pretty random, and so we could have ended up in a lot of places. But here we are, and it's pretty good.
Alice: I hear a lot of people about writing the gratitude journals.
Dani: Right.
Alice: Something like that, or writing letters to different people in their lives, and that's worked wonders for them.
Dani: Right.
Alice: So that's great.
Eli: I think one of the biggest things that the SSW program focuses on, because it's mentioned in almost every class, is self-care, and allowing yourself to know that you need time to heal and just relax. And so even if that's Friday night, after you're done your work week, just going and having a bubble bath, or playing with your sibling or your child if you have kids or your pets, just allowing yourself to take that time and just decompress from all the stress of school, of work, of homework, of family. Just being able to have that self-care is really important.
Alice: I totally agree with that. Because I know a lot of students here at Centennial College, not only are they here studying a full time program, but many of them have family responsibilities, or they have a part time job to go to as well. So somehow putting into your weekly agenda some time, some me time, to yourself, whether is something reflective, something mental, meditation or something like that, that helps you, or something more physical like jogging or running or playing the drums. So whatever works for you to help you relieve stress. That's wonderful. Great. So if we kind of step back and look at career resilience, or resilience in general, and kind of thinking about the context of all the things, challenges, that we go through in life, why do you think resilience is important for us to cultivate?
Eli: I think it's important because people have a desire to succeed, and a lot of times we don't look at what success actually means because we compare ourselves to other people and other people's accomplishments. And if you do that, a lot of the time you're going to just slip into a depression or something along the lines of that, because you're going to look at someone else and be like, oh, well they're achieving more than me. They're the same age and they're farther in life. And it's just going to make you feel awful about yourself, and you're not going to want to continue doing what you're doing. Whereas if you step back and look at it and go, wow, they've achieved a lot. I have time to grow and I have time to achieve what I want. It might take longer, but I'm going to keep pushing forward. So being resilient allows you to look at that and not view small setbacks as your ship is sinking. It allows you to embrace the fact that your friend who's the same age as you, yeah, they might already be done school because they started earlier, or they might be getting married, or having kids, or they have their dream job and you don't, you have to step back from that and just be happy for them and not compare what they're achieving to what you'll eventually achieve. Because you never know where you'll be when you actually reach your goal. So you have to look at that and just say, this is my goal, this is where I want to be, and I'm going to be there. I'm happy that my friends are where they wanted to be, and never compare the achievements. Because then you'll never be happy with what you have if you're constantly comparing your life to someone else's.
Alice: So your time might come, right? You never know when that would be. They might have had their time, yours will come in the future. It may be in a different form, maybe unexpected times or situations. Right? Yeah. That's great. How about you, Dani? So why do you think, given all the ups and downs in our lives, why do you think it's important for us to cultivate resilience?
Dani: Right. So I think as an academic I'll be a little bit critical. Sometimes I'm critical of the concept. I think it's a positive way of looking at survival skills.
Alice: Sure.
Dani: And one of the things that I'm very interested in from an equity lens is who has to have survival skills more than other folks have to have survival skills? And who gets tested on those skills? And so resiliency is a really good positive way of looking at, okay, everybody's got to survive. We've all got to eat, we all want to do well, we all want to see our kids do well. All of that. And yet some people have to be resilient. And so if you have to be resilient, I think let's be positive about it. Sure. At the same time, I also think we also don't want to lose sight of the kind of larger societal things that are going on that force us to have to be resilient. We would like a world where some of us didn't have to be so resilient all the time. But of course it's incredibly valuable to build those skills. So I'm going to use an example, but one of the trips that I run here at the college that I'm super lucky to be on is a FLIP Trip, so it's a Faculty Led International Placement. So for example, this is the third year that we've run it, and we take a group of students from the college, similar to a GCELE. This is more focused and curricular, and we traveled to, in our case, Costa Rica. Eli was one of the students on the trip with 12 other lovely people. And it's one of those life experiences that if you can do it, it really puts you to the test. Do you want to talk about some of the many challenges that we went through?
Eli: It's physically challenging, but it's also extremely mentally challenging. There's a lot of hiking, there's a lot of walking, there's eating food that you're not used to. Sometimes some people are used to it. My body was not used to it, so I got sick four days into the trip. It's a two week trip. But still, we got to climb or hike up this ginormous hill. I think it took us about an hour to get to the top, and it was beautiful. 90% of Costa Ricans apparently have never been to the top of this hill. And it was beautiful, and there was a few people that made it a quarter of the way up, half the way up, and then they had to turn back because it was too much. And I think they're resilient in the fact that they knew that they couldn't push themselves further, because it just would have been awful for them. They were sweating a bunch, they were having problems breathing, and so they made that decision to turn back, and all of us supported them. Which builds into the network. And then we also got to go on to a few different territories. We visited three of the indigenous territories there, and each of the communities are resilient in so many different ways. One of the communities that we went to fully have their language, their native language, still. And we went to other ones where they don't have it, but they're trying to reclaim what they can. And I feel like there are two different situations, but they both show the same resilience in the fact that they are who they are and they’re proud of that. And they're not afraid to let the world know that that's who they are.
Alice: So I think the last question I have for both of you today is if you were to share your last tips with the student audience that's listening to our podcast today, what are some skills or tips that you can share with them to help them stay resilient as they navigate through the uncertainty and unknown and changes on the career journey?
Eli: Don't look at things as setbacks exactly. Because setback has a negative connotation to it. Look at it as just you're changing your path, and you're just traveling the path that's less walked upon sometimes. And it's okay to change your mind, it's okay to have off days, and it's okay to need other people. Because I feel like a lot of people that are just becoming adults, so people that are in their 20s or even 30s, sometimes think that to be an adult you have to not need other people. But we need people. That's just part of basic human structures. We need other humans. And so I think allowing yourself to know that you need someone sometimes is probably the most helpful thing. And then also not looking at bad things that happen as your ship sinking. Because if you look at it that way, then you're just allowing yourself to slip into the negative mindset of, well, this didn't work out, so everything's going down.
Alice: Right.
Eli: Whereas if you just look at it as, oh, there's a little hole that needs patching, then you can patch it with positivity and a better mindset and a better future.
Alice: Right. Okay. I like that.
Dani: I would say, building on that, that to create the conditions so that you can be resilient. Right? We have an incredible department that supports students here, so students shouldn't feel like you have to be resilient all by yourself. Look at the resources that are out there and create that set of support so that when something happens you've got a cushion. Right? That you can be resilient. If there is no support for you, being resilient is really tough. So using the other supports in this college that exist, creating your own set of networks and friends. I always say, turn to the person next to you. It's easier to come to class if you know somebody in class, and if someone knows you're not there. So yeah, so creating those conditions so that you've got that support system.
Alice: Any other last thoughts you want to share with the students? We've touched a lot on optimism today. I think we cannot live without optimism, especially nowadays with so many things going on in the world of work. A lot of students don't even know exactly, what with IT coming, or AI, I should say, and then a lot of web-based digitalization and globalization of the world of work. Some of the jobs that exist when they graduate and might not even exist right now.
Dani: Right.
Alice: So having that persistence and optimism is really, really important. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today. I’m sure you felt touched and inspired by the personal and authentic life stories that both Eli and Dani shared. Don’t forget to join us next time for the final episode six in our podcast series when Employment Advisor Annie Sun will be talking to Sarah law, Senior Manager of Early Talent Acquisition at the Royal Bank of Canada.