Hello! My name is Jess, and I’m currently working for XP. I started working here during my work term at Seneca. Although I was officially hired as a Marketing Intern, my role and responsibilities have since evolved and I’ve learned so much about myself and my career trajectory.
A bit about me – I completed my undergrad in Psychology & Business with a minor in Economics at the University of Waterloo. I graduated right into the pandemic (April 2020, bad timing!) and decided to go back to school for a certificate. I ended up studying Esports Marketing Management at Seneca College.
- Managing work and personal life
Keeping work-life balance can be difficult nowadays, with everyone being “always-online”. Even when I was working in more corporate environments where communications only took place on Slack or Microsoft Teams, I still would catch myself logging in after work to check my messages and respond to emails.
The distinction between work and life is even fuzzier now that many organisations are using Discord to communicate, including my current workplace. Chatting to your boss in the same place where you talk to your friends is a little jarring!
Spending all day at the same computer in the same room for work and leisure often means that work will bleed over into your personal life if you’re not careful. Over time I have gotten better at balancing this at XP by creating rituals that specifically define time for work and time for myself.
One thing that’s helped me is closing all my work-related windows after I sign off for the day, or using the multiple desktops feature to keep things separate. There are still times where I annoy my friends by checking my work messages during League games, but that’s a work in progress, haha.
- Keeping on schedule
A lot of the skills you learn in post-secondary are applicable to keeping on schedule in your “adult” professional life too. Profs don’t chase you for missing homework or falling behind on course content, so you have to keep yourself on track.
Learning this and how to keep your own schedule can be a bit of a steep learning curve at first, but I really think that online learning has helped a lot of us learn these skills in a bit of trial by fire.
What has worked for me personally is just setting a million alarms and notifications in my calendar apps, notes apps, and physical pinboards. I have a really bad memory, but when your phone and smartwatch are constantly prodding you to remember to send that email it’s a lot harder to forget.
- How best to integrate yourself into your team/organisation
This was something I really struggled with when I first started working remotely. It can be quite lonely sitting at your computer all day without human interaction!!
Fixing this may be something you have to be proactive on. I brought it up to my manager, Jason during my first term. He set up team stand-ups to ensure we’d get some face-to-face time, which really helped.
Other than that I think working remotely can be the same as interacting in any work environment, just virtually. It’s just a matter of doing water cooler chat in #general on Discord instead of over lunch.
From my experience, working at a gaming-related startup means the environment is a lot more casual than my previous work environments. It’s a lot easier to get comfortable and have things in common with my coworkers!
- Shifting from post-secondary mindset to the work mindset
I would say that was the biggest shift for me from post-secondary. Uni and college felt like a lot of “fending for yourself” and figuring things out on my own, but work is a much more collaborative environment.
I have a couple of coops under my belt now but the first few times were tough. I was very nervous when transitioning into the office lifestyle. I was afraid of making mistakes and/or having older, more experienced colleagues not taking me seriously.
It can be tough to ask for help out of fear of seeming stupid or inexperienced. Knowing when you need support is a critical skill, in work and your daily life. It ends up saving you a lot of time and you learn so much. It’s better to ask a colleague to teach you how to do something in 10 minutes than to struggle on your own for an hour.
- Lessons learned
I think the most important lesson I’ve learned since I’ve started working is that mistakes happen.
Making my first mistake at work felt like the end of the world, but life goes on. You’ll mess up, but so will people far more experienced than you.
Everyone else is also learning everyday and figuring things out as they go, so as long as you learn from your mistakes you’re golden!
