Today is the eighth day of Rosalilium’s Blog Every Day in May Challenge, and I have to say… I’m amazed I’m keeping up! Today’s prompt is all about those things that take over our lives… jobs! More specifically, our first job.
I got my first job when I was about fourteen years old. I say I ‘got’ the job, but that’s not quite accurate because I actually started working for myself. At this point in my life I was living in Spain, and I had been for about two years. By then I could speak fluent Spanish, which gave me a pretty decent USP within the expat community, and qualified me for two things: translating and tutoring.
Both English and Spanish people would hire me to translate for them. Typically this would have something to do with the buying or selling of land, or registering at a school or doctor’s. But my most interesting job was translating in court, in front of a panel of three judges. It was kind of scary though.
I also had quite a few tutoring jobs, of the official and non-official variety. The official involving being paid to tutor English kids who were struggling with Spanish, the unofficial involving doing my Spanish friends’ English homework for them at the back of the school bus.
This was a pretty good source of money back then, and occasionally I’d get paid in ‘alternative’ methods (fresh honey, a crate of oranges, trips to the beach) which was good too. I was in charge of my hours, so I could fit it around school and friends, but it wasn’t my dream job. The thing is, I was painfully shy when I was a teenager, I’m no social butterfly now, but back then I hated talking in front of people I didn’t know! I think that being forced into a situation that forced me to interact with strangers did me a world of good, but I really didn’t think so for a while.
All in all, I’m glad I did it. It gave me a taste of working for myself, and I definitely liked it. I know that I have the motivation to be my own boss, and I’m more than capable of surviving a variety of awkward situations… hopefully I’ll get to dust off these skills in the not too distant future…
See you tomorrow,
D x
[P.S. Title translates to ‘at the beginning’.]
Doing it the Open Way 
Fascinating! I too am very surprised, although also slightly proud, that I am keeping up with BEDM! Let’s hope we are still saying that in a week or so x
Quite a unique first job !
I’m eight for eight on BEDM too! Yay for us! 🙂
That’s a more interesting first job than most people have!