Induction day

I had an induction for an organisation I recently applied for. It's the first proper induction day I've done and although I've had to sit interviews for my last two jobs, this one was much more formal and I'm happy to have gotten through. 

Although I had already learnt about a few of the topics covered today, I found that I was still able to gain new insight from some things that I had already learnt. I'm sure there will be times where everyone feels as though they've learnt something "to death" and that there's nothing new to gain from learning it again, but I think we should always embrace opportunity to revisit things that have been learned in the past. Things change and we change. Sometimes we see or interpret things differently from how we used to in the past. The lesson I'm taking away from this is to not get stuck in my ways as the years go on. I think I'll make a conscious effort to re-evaluate my way of thinking from time to time. 

I really enjoyed one of the activities we did today. I had never done it before, and it was very effective in getting me to think about how to care for those who cannot move or communicate as freely as I can. 

It was about an hour or so til home time and on a piece of paper, we were each asked to write down something along the lines of how our day was and the environment that we were in. It was all anonymous and when we had finished writing then we had to scrunch up our piece of paper and throw it into the middle of the room. The gentleman who was running the session then picked up all the balls of paper and randomly read them out loud. There were a lot of nice things written, but amongst all of that was some honesty. Some people thought the room was cold, others were bored and some were disappointed that lunch was not provided for us (we had to bring our own lunch from home). 

The guy then went on to explain that although we had our own thoughts and feelings, if the situation was appropriate, then anyone of us could just turn up the heating and that even though we had to bring our own lunch today, we still had that choice of what we could bring. 

He pointed out that people who cannot communicate their needs and wants rely so much on us to be able to recognise these things and act accordingly. He said that sometimes people can overlook all the small things because for us we can just do it ourselves. For example, if you're taking a person who is non-verbal and in a wheelchair for a walk and the sun is in their eyes, they cannot verbalise this. If we were in their position, we'd put on sunglasses or walk in the shade, but they can't do this the way that we can. 

It really just comes down to trying to think about all of their needs and what we would do or want if we were in the same situation. Just because someone doesn't communicate something, doesn't necessarily mean that they are happy in the situation that they're in. If that makes sense. I hope it does. It's been a long day I'm my brain is all worked out. 

Even though all these training sessions can be quite long and tiring, I love any opportunity for personal and professional development. If it will make me a better person, I want to know about it.