A WorkLife Lesson: Noelle’s Story: A Desire to Help Others as She Had Been Helped
Noelle was employed as a Market Research Analyst. While she enjoyed the work, for a long time, she had been considering going freelance. The reason was that she had other interests she wanted to make time for. Being employed, this wasn’t always possible because her work, quite often at the last minute, required her to travel, taking her away from home for days at a time, which made it challenging for her to commit to her other interests.
This changed during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she was required to work from home and when travel was not allowed.
This, of course, also meant that she couldn’t become involved in the other interests she wanted to make time for - well, not in the traditional sense of connecting with people in-person, that is.
However, now that Noelle knew how her workday would pan out - i.e. she could work regular 9 am - 5 pm hours, with the confidence she wouldn’t be required to make any late changes to her daily work schedule because of needing to be somewhere else.
Noelle had always wanted to help less privileged children in the way she herself had been helped. She had had a difficult upbringing. When her parents had been unable to provide the care that she and her younger brother, Nick, needed, Social Services had intervened, resulting in them being separated and placed in one foster home after another. Life was difficult, and the way Noelle had coped was by burying her head in her schoolbooks. This helped to keep her mind occupied with learning and off the distress of her situation.
Noelle had had a plan of sorts. That was to do as well as she could at school, then get a job as soon as she could so that she could earn enough money to rent a place for her and Nick to live together, until he, too, finished school. Nick was five years younger than Noelle, so it could be said Noelle had a five-year long-term plan and, year on year, a one-year short-term plan to work towards doing well in her final school exams and then get the best job she could.
In this lesson, you will learn how Noelle’s good work ethic helped her at different stages of her WorkLife to achieve what she needed for herself and others.
In this lesson’s WorkLife Learning Assignment, you will answer three questions to help you plan to go freelance when you don’t know what the unknown holds for you.
In this lesson’s Continuous WorkLife Learning Assignment, you will learn the importance of making connections through doing good work and helping others.