Covid-19's Impact on Careers

Another Day of Teleworking

           Ever since the spreading of Covid-19, we've been making adjustments to our daily lives ever since. We had to change the way we interact with one another in public, how we celebrate milestones, how we participate at events, how to attend classes, and most definitely how we conduct tasks at work. In this article, I will discuss how the pandemic has affected the way we work and how I found ways to adjust.

          When the lockdown in the United States was taking place, I was still working in Spain as an English assistant. Schools and other businesses were still open in Spain during that time. It would be March 14th when Spain's President, Pedro Sanchez, would shutdown the country because of Covid was spreading in Madrid then Barcelona. I decided to stay in Spain for a little over two weeks hoping that Spain would get the spreading of the virus under control but they never did. I eventually left the country to return back to the United States on a Friday morning and arrived in U.S land that evening in New York. When I arrived back on American land, I hoped that businesses would open back up by the summer time and I could work as a camp counselor for the community center near my home. Becoming a Summer camp counselor for the community center I was working at before I lived in Spain were already my original plan before the spread of Covid-19 hit the west part of the world. As time went on and the date for the program to start working kept getting closer, I started losing hope. As of August 19th, I am still waiting to hear back from the boss to find out when the community center will open back up. They are hoping to open around the month of September.

          After being in the house for a month, I considered to start my online teaching career earlier than I planned. I've been teaching in person for years so I thought it would be an easy transition. I was completely wrong. After attending an online version of the TEFL course I was suppose to take in China this month; I realized that I only enjoy teaching subjects in person. I wouldn't have learned this about myself if our current pandemic didn't take place. I'll say there are some blessings by being in our current pandemic. 

         At the beginning of lockdowns in the U.S. the only jobs that were allowed to remain open were the ones that were considered essential. The jobs that were considered essential were health care workers, places where you could buy food items, and places where food was being processed. The other jobs had to either shutdown completely or find a way to complete tasks online from home. After seeing that all jobs wasn't going to open as soon as I hoped and realizing that online teaching wasn't for me; I decided to look for another line of work I could do at home while waiting for the community center to open back up. I searched for remote work for writers and online marketers.

        Since graduating from the University of Maryland in Baltimore, I have always pictured myself traveling overseas while teaching until I was ready to settle down and start a family, but this virus had other plans. I didn't think I would be considering teleworking until close to five years from now. As I was applying to jobs on Indeed.com, I came to the conclusion that I needed to revamp my resume. I say this because the resume I had saved on my account only reflected how I would make the perfect teacher but not a great writer who could create content through marketing. After eliminating all the jobs that mainly focused on teaching from my resume, I was able to highlight content and marketing experiences from the remaining jobs listed. I also added my website www.dearmsaphrodite.com and my Instagram page onto my resume as well. After applying to jobs for a few weeks, I finally got invited to an interview to become a marketing assistant intern. After completing the interview I was hired two days later. I personally believe my cover letter helped me get a shot for an interview.

         On the following Monday after signing my contract over that weekend, I became an official employee for the company. The company was a small business starting up that was Black owned and located in Washington, D.C. I was assigned to interview a local restaurant and write an article on them the same week. The next couple of weeks I was assigned to gather information about a list of local restaurants and to send invitation emails to them for a possible collaboration. By the end of that week, I got a phone call from the boss letting me know that their funds were running low and that they would have to put the internship on hold because they wouldn't be able to pay me after that day. The owner paid for my time I worked for them the very next day.

         Of course I was upset when I received the phone call, but I could understand where they were coming from. I really enjoyed my time working for the company. I was able to share my creativity while getting paid for it and this experience showed me that I could enter another career field that doesn't require me to teach in a classroom. While I'm not currently working for a paycheck at the moment; I can see myself teleworking in this field while I continue to work on the Dear Ms. Aphrodite Organization. I plan to apply to more job applications looking for a creative writer or a social media marketer in the near future.

       Just by reading my experience of transitioning from one career to another in the midst of a pandemic can give you an idea on what a lot of people have been doing to make some form of income. Since lockdowns took place, people had to either transition to teleworking or had to find another career path all together. As I mentioned in my article, "Is the College Degree Losing Value?",  I feel as though traditional higher education is way behind trade school education because of the fact that a lot of students are not able to practice what they learned in the real world in real time. As we see taking place with this pandemic, a lot of people are struggling to see how their degree of choice will work for them if they didn't choose a job that was considered essential. Even though a lot of job positions will soon return back into the office, some positions will continue to remain as a teleworking position and I feel as though colleges should start preparing students for both possibilities. By preparing students for both possibilities, they can make the transition from college to their career life smoother.

         From this article, I hope you gained a clearer picture on what the world is currently looking like in the U.S when it comes to careers and I hope it makes you think how you can adjust our new normal. From my own personal experience, I've gotten to fully understand the importance in becoming flexible when it comes to creating opportunities in all circumstance.