Lessons I learned at my first job

No matter how long your professional career has been, you can never forget your first job in life. The very first job which lays the foundation of one's career instills the feeling of financial independence. The first job is always like the first love. It can be adventurous, magical, exciting yet sometimes frustrating and hateful. It tends to polish us in a tough manner as it always has something for us to learn for a long lasting career span.

In my 3rd year of university when I was still studying Multimedia (Digital Media and Animation), I started looking for work to support my daily transport expenses.  In India, parents generally pay for  university tuition fees. My parents were paying for mine as well but I had a lot of traveling expenses because my university was in a different city. I thought of selling my design and animation skills by putting up my resumé and portfolio on awn.com where they always have jobs posted on the website. I applied for a few and was approached by a person from Canada to revamp the digital designs for his website. We had a few meetings online (as we both were located in different countries) to discuss the process. I never let the time zone difference affect my studies and my work and worked diligently through it. Yes, I was that naive that as soon as I handed him all the designs, I never saw his face again. He never answered my emails or phone calls  when I asked him to reimburse me for my service.


Having worked on caricatures for a local newspaper and design pieces for relatives and friends, it leads me to an understanding that our society lives in a misconception that an artist should never be paid. "Freelance" work does not mean "Free"lance work. An artist has spent money on his/her tuition fee, time and effort to learn the skills  much like other professionals. An artist has to make his/her both ends meet and has bills to pay. When an artist is asked to produce an art for "free" with a promise of exposure to his/her art, why is this promise not applicable in any other career choice?  A society which is poor in mind and spirit never appreciates the creativity of its artists. Thus, underestimates the power of art in illuminating  tolerance and compassion in society.

One should not be too excited to aboard the employment ship without considering all the legal formalities involved. Is your employer going to take advantage of you because you are a beginner? Is your employer paying you as much as they promised? Is your employer making you work more than what is mentioned in the offer letter you signed while being hired? Is your employer making you stay later than other employees because he/she knows that you desperately need this job and would comply with his requests/orders?

My first job, somehow, taught me how to carry a project single-handedly even when the employer was based offshores. It will always play a big role in maturing me when I look back at how I started my journey of financial independence. I'd like to remember my first job as a learning lesson, yet it empowers me in a way that it helped me in putting my right foot forward towards discovering myself.


This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.