Victor’s Journey to Professionalism 👨💻
The following is a reflection from an intern about their experiences at Future of Engagement written in 2021.
This week was the first week of my changemaking placement and we were given onboarding material to learn more about the Future of Engagement and their goals. Additionally we were given material to read that more generally involved the Canadian parliamentary system. Over the weekend we will meet up with the manager Haman to ask our questions and complete our onboarding. This is my first academic related job that I formally applied to, and this is my reflection about what has happened so far and my transition to a working participant in society.
While I’ve been working through this onboarding material about the parliamentary system I get a small sense of pride because I voted for the first time this past election and participated in some small way to our government system. Since we are still in the onboarding phase of the placement program I have not been able to contribute to any work for the Future of Engagement. But when I went through the notion page about their past projects, I am reminded about some of the projects that I’ve been involved in and get a sense of pride because I can say that I have experience doing things like building commercial websites or making professional infographics. I am also in the process of filling out my LinkedIn page for the placement which involves me doing some retrospection and thinking of projects that I am proud of participating in. The organization of their work flow using slack and notion is nice and it’s something that I would expect from a professional environment.
A challenge I faced during this week would be the problems setting up my Future of Engagement email. However, I reached out to Haman and Julie and managed to get it fixed in time to receive all the communications that I needed. The problem was that the set up link expired within 48 hours and I waited too long to set up my account. That taught me about reading all my emails and looking at them more closely and more regularly, and doing tasks sooner rather than later. Overall it has been a painless process so far besides the waiting which drives anxiety up a little bit. The fact that I got accepted for this placement is also a success that I have gratitude for. I’m grateful for the skills and opportunities that I have accumulated from past experiences that continue to make me a more valued prospect for future employers and contributed to me being accepted for this placement.
The wait for our first onboarding meeting has been suspenseful for sure, in the meantime I’ve been contacting some references to get their permission to include them in my Linkedin profile and going through the material provided. I’m excited for the meeting and to officially start my role at the Future of Engagement. One thing I’m disappointed in is that I don’t have a good photo to include in my LinkedIn profile and my slack / notion accounts that I will be using for the placement. Hopefully my work and school schedule clear up for a few days on the weekend and I can find my suit and take a few nice photos outside. A few things have to line up for that and I might have to settle for taking a photo at a less optimal time and updating it later.
In class we spend some time talking about political advocacy and what the average person can do to make a difference in their lives. In the placement program’s onboarding material there was some research about what types of advocacy different demographics engage in, it mentioned that older people were more busy yet had more income so they preferred to give financial contribution to campaigns while younger groups often prefer volunteer work because they have more free time and less money. It changed my outlook slightly because the typical impression that I had of political campaigns was that older people would be volunteering in them because students would be busy with school. That could still be the case because the data didn’t mention whether or not older people vastly outnumbered younger people in political advocacy participation, but it still gave me something to think about. I’m also learning about the provincial riding associations and their authority to influence who actually gets to put their name on the ballot for each riding, by retroactively changing the date for membership eligibility and by changing the time that the vote takes place to strategically disenfranchise specific voters. Voter disenfranchisement is a popular issue that I have heard repeated in the media and online. The fact that election day is not a holiday and in the US they only accept a limited number of different forms of voter ID can systematically prevent otherwise eligible voters from participating in the political system. Similarly, the Future of Engagement plans to assist disenfranchised candidates to find a place to start and grow their campaigns. This is an issue of accessibility that reminds me of the lack of pop up clinics that we learned about which affected the vaccination rates in minority communities.
The first past the post system that Canada uses is always a contentious topic whenever it’s brought up. Although people have generally seemed to be against it and I believe Trudeau ran his 2015 campaign saying it would be the last under the first past the post system. Despite this, the last 2021 election was still using the first past the post system and Trudaeu continues to say he is open to replacing the system. It seems like it isn’t an easy fix to begin with and the efficacy of every system across the world is always being studied so I wonder what the ideal replacement would be. Specifically though, my question is what difference would it truly make to replace the first past the post system? From the limited information that I’ve come across, replacing the First past the post system with something like ranked ballots would lead to a very similar distribution of power among the Canadian parties and it’s own set of problems. For instance, although the winning candidate would need to have a majority of the votes, because you are forcing voters to express preferences for the other candidates it might be the case that the least unfavored candidate wins rather than the most popular one.
On the weekend I will be meeting with Haman to ask some questions about general Canadian politics and about the Future of Engagement’s products, impact and industry. During the meeting I believe that we will be assigned a task to do in pairs and then a more specific community project. I will be asking some typical questions about those tasks we are assigned like the deadline, budget, and purpose. Afterwards I’ll ask some clarifying questions about the specific task we will be assigned and what the expectations will be.
I’m passionate about a few different things including making human and computer interactions more efficient (and more broadly human to tool usage). I like organizing and collecting dense information and presenting it in an understandable way. I also enjoy developing my technical skills like programming, website building and UX/UI design to solve real world applications. So hopefully I will be able to do these things in some form in the tasks that will be assigned to me. I would like to improve upon and learn about these skills in relation to political activism and how I would have to adapt them to suit that need
I plan to look back upon these reflections to see my growth. And hopefully I will be proud of the work I accomplish and the skills that I gain enough so that I include these experiences in my resume and the Linkedin profile I’m working on. Once I see that those measures of my success and growth are increasing, I will be content that I have benefited from this opportunity.
