Volunteer work was one of the topics that came into my life after moving to Germany. I found various jobs with the motivation to serve and to use my talents not only to make money but to experience new areas without performance anxiety.
Nowadays, I volunteer in a school library, which is like Harry Potter’s school ambiance, for 2 hours a week.
When I was choosing this job, I was excited to experience a different field, and the Hogwarts-like atmosphere of the school was also an important motivation 🙂, but on the other hand, it was quite scary to jump into an unfamiliar sea.
To overcome this fear, I promised to support myself in this brand-new adventure full of uncertainties, just by watching without judging myself.
After all, I didn’t have performance pressure, and I didn’t have to worry about being fired. I could have been more curious, observant, and mindful of myself, and I was.
So, this process has opened a path of learning that leads me to many discoveries about working concepts and myself at work.
My biggest gain was to realize that my “I don’t know” pattern was unrealistic.
In the first hours of the first day, I remembered my word of self-support as my mind, which made good use of the fact that I had no experience in this job before, pushed me on a path toward feeling inadequate. Then I realized that I should not expect much from myself because of this fact, and I could have enjoyed the most beautiful part of the job, which is the learning process.
With this awareness, when I stepped out of my concerns and looked around, I learned that the other volunteers had started work on the same day as me. They did not know the processes or the library program used or had not even thought about them.
I have to say that it wasn’t that easy for me to notice this fact. Because part of the group was too experienced to fake it till they made it, and others were so happy in that world of deception that they thought they knew everything. As for me, I was already looking through the “I’m new and I don’t know” window 🙂.
Nevertheless, it didn’t take me long to use my process and system experience, albeit in a different field. Within a few hours, I was familiar with the processes and the computer program and started to support the people around me. Then they took off their masks 🙂.
This job may be one of my fastest experiences where I break free from my fear of “doing wrong”.
That was the fastest way that I could apply my experience to a brand-new subject.
Being a team takes time
We didn’t have the opportunity to get to know the team more at the beginning. In the first hours of the first day, a friendly team and information-sharing environment spontaneously emerged, but when the students came and raided the library, it was instantly over. At that point, everyone clung to their methods under the stress of work. We have become quite individualistic under pressure. We had a lot of surprises from each other.
As we remembered, we are strangers to each other, and cooperation has decreased. Everyone was nervous, and I now know that this tension doesn’t come from performance pressure now, its roots are much more personal and deeper. For example, even with easy questions such as “could you give us this book” or “where was this”, there was tension between us. It became suddenly unclear how we would ask each other for a thing to do without being perceived as giving an order.
For some time, cooperation remained low. Over time, jokes and “no problem” sentences began to be heard in the environment, and cooperation started to increase.
I was able to experience one of the jobs that I was always curious about.
First of all, it was a good experience to be able to feel like a librarian (even if I was an apprentice ): ). It was also a kind of liberty to look at what I was doing at that moment without formalizing any career path or without having any other concerns.
I loved being in a place full of books. I loved it when the kids came to borrow books. I liked that they were happy when they could get the books they liked. I enjoyed being in school.
I’m Discovering My Work Patterns
Since different people (from the group) came to work every week, I was able to observe the effect of people on my work motivation as if I were in a bean experiment 🙂. Everything else stayed the same, and the people I worked with changed every time I was in the library. I simply realized, with some of them I was more anxious and with others I was feeling much lighter.
Each time, I was in a different mood and had a different collaboration according to the people I worked with that day. On the days when Marisa came, while she was registering the new books into the old card system, I covered the registered books in peace, accompanied by Vivaldi’s violin concertos. On the days when Sabine arrived, we arranged the shelves by chatting and with great joy. In the days when Ruth came, while I was tinkering with the program in a corner, she always kept tidying up and cleaning up in motion. In any case, I was able to focus on whatever my task was for the day.
As a result, I found that much of my motivation came from the people I worked with. Another big motivation of mine was the work itself. And when those conditions were met, it was good for me to be at work.
Language is everything, but understanding each other can also be independent of language.
The contributions of working there to my German practice are indisputable, but you don’t need to know the language perfectly to talk with some people.
While some of the people in the group waited for me to clarify what I was trying to say until the last word, others understood me well halfway. Well, the former made a great contribution to my language practice, and the latter felt very good.
Considering that I was new to German, it took a lot more courage to work there at first, but strangely, I soon started to understand more and write the names and surnames of the children correctly 🙂.
Children sometimes say something at length 🙂. I understand part of it. I didn’t quite understand some of it, but now I can answer many questions and even give book advice. Can unconscious learning be something like this 🙂?
Why do people work if not for money?
I think the need to feel useful, to get away from troubled family matters, to look cool, not to be able to find anything different to do, to meet the needs of socializing and talking, and to be appreciated are some of the motivations, other than money.
Among them, in my opinion, the purest purpose may be the love to work and the love to serve, but others are also very valuable. I think it is almost miraculous for humans to produce and serve while meeting their own needs.
I think we’re all driven by the feeling of belonging somewhere, finding someone who listens to us, and doing something valuable.
I find it great to discover these by doing rather than by thinking 🙂.
Life is so big that there are enough people and things to offer us exactly what we need when we need them, as long as we keep trying.
Sincerely
