My very first paid job, besides babysitting, was working for an auctioneer at farm, household and estate auction sales when I was around eleven or twelve. The job involved several duties that included directing traffic, taking payments when customers actually purchased things and being a gopher for pretty much anything. I did plenty of babysitting jobs from the age of eleven onward for several different families. I loved babysitting, especially if it involved babies.

A lady just down the road who I babysat for regularly, hired me one summer to travel with her and the baby two provinces over to attend her high school reunion and basically be a nanny the whole trip. The reunion involved several activities and so while she was out, I stayed home with the baby. I slept with the baby and got up in the middle of the night to warm his bottle, feed him and change his diaper. Then get him back to sleep. I think I was twelve or thirteen. We were gone for a week. I remember she paid me $100 and I thought I was rich.

There weren’t too many options for jobs when you live out in the middle of nowhere, not at least until you have your driver’s license. Of course we were constantly “working” on the farm with my Dad but those are not paid jobs, for the most part. When we were small, he would pay my sisters and I to sweep out grain bins in the summer. A hot, hot, dusty job and the thing I hated most about it was sometimes there were mice in the bins. Sometimes he would give us a loonie (Canadian dollar coin), to grab the electric fence just to make sure it was still working.

When I was sixteen I went to Alberta to live with my aunt and uncle for a summer. I got two jobs in restaurants washing dishes and doing some cooking prep. I rode my bike to work each day and at the end of the day, my boss from the Bavarian restaurant would load my bike in the back of his little hatchback and drive me home. It was a great experience.

My first sort of real job around home was pumping gas when I was seventeen. I liked it. This gas station was the only one in town open twenty-four hours a day so I got to do some cool shifts like six pm til three am. And then I had a half hour drive home. I remember often seeing northern lights in the sky on the way home at that hour.

After that I briefly worked in a butcher shop, hated that. I waitressed for several years, loved that. One of the most fun jobs ever. Also for a few years I worked in a residence where individuals lived who had intellectual disabilities. I started that job at the ripe old age of seventeen and it involved handing out medication, cooking, cleaning, helping the residents with hygiene, bathing, and then also doing recreational activities with them. Also a very fun job.

And along the way, before I started college I worked as a bagger at a grocery store and behind the counter in a fast food restaurant, A&W. When I was in college, my cousin was the office manager of H&R Block, an income tax pop up, that existed only during income tax season and she gave me a part time job as a receptionist. Which, even at the time I found hilarious because I was completely clueless about taxes. I didn’t know what income tax was or why it existed. Customers would have questions about their tax returns and they may as well have been talking quantum physics because I hadn’t the foggiest idea what they were talking about or how to help them. It was like they were speaking a foreign language.

Once I became a nurse, that’s pretty much all I’ve done, although I’ve worked in lots of different roles as a nurse. I won’t get into that, I find it super boring. Most recently I worked part time for our local newspaper, covering whatever events the editor had no time for. I also did a part time gig as a mentor for nursing students.

I’ve tried to start several small businesses along the way, but that’s a story for another day.

Currently I work as an Instructor at our college and it’s been my favourite “professional” job to date. I love being in the classroom with the students and it’s allowed me to go back to school myself, to take a teaching course online. I hope to get better and better at it and though it’s temporary right now, I want it to turn into my second career and leave nursing in the dust.