This “Flower Exercise” is meant to get you to better understand yourself, your preferences, and your purpose regarding the work environment. By following each petal, you learn more about what you wish to gain from your career experience and what you believe you can offer.

At the beginning of completing this task myself, I was completely overwhelmed by the idea of the flower, but as I began with the first petal, the details I learned about myself proved worth the effort and contemplation.

When I began to write out the types of people I have worked with in the past, I found a pretty even split between working with coworkers who made my work life enjoyable and those who made it less so. I found myself writing things like “I don’t want to work with someone who is emotionally manipulative” and laughing at myself for even staying in a job like that, even for a short time. It made me realize that when it comes to coworker preferences, maybe my bar was a little too low. At the very least, I don’t want to work with someone who is actively mean to me, but that should be obvious…shouldn’t it?

In recollection of this, I began to think about what I wanted from my work relationships and what types of people I cared about being around. Although it wasn’t necessarily at the very top of my list, I found myself really wanting to be around people who inspire me. I want to work with people who have a strong, passionate curiosity about the world, much like myself. I want to work with someone who is interesting to talk to and teaches me new things all the time. I was surprised by my gravitation toward dynamic agency and shared intellect. In this, I found that wishing for my coworkers to be kind is a given to me, and beyond that, I want more.

The second petal deals with your preferred working conditions. This petal was one of the least daunting of the group, mainly because I have always known I do not want to work in a cubicle. I have never seen myself in an office building or at a desk on the eleventh floor with little to no natural light.

To no surprise at all, I want to work somewhere that has natural light that feels open and inviting. A place that has dynamic energy instead of stagnation.

I then moved on to the next petal, “transferable skills.” Completing this petal and doing the exercises within it took me a while. Not because I didn’t feel like I had important skills to offer but because I had difficulty figuring out which ones I felt were the most important. Even now, I feel like there are some listed on there that might not be in the right order, or perhaps I feel like my order of preference will change. More so, I found that doing these exercises helped me better understand what skills of mine I find are really important. It made me wonder what other people would say about me. What would my skills be if I asked my closest friends, family, and professors what they felt stood out to them? It made me wonder what would change, what would remain on the list, and what might be added that I did not know about myself.

The fourth petal, “knowledges,” seemed to surprise me more than I anticipated. Having a family so deeply woven into the entertainment industry, I have found myself steering away from that avenue to give myself a sense of independence. And yet, this exercise made me realize how much I care about media. As someone who is extremely opinionated, I found myself writing about movies and television shows that I either loved or hated, and I find myself increasingly passionate about discussing them. If I were on a desert island, I would 100% talk about my favorite films and TV shows for days on end. For the most part, I think I just write it off as stupid leisure activities, but this exercise made me realize how deeply I care about the media I intake and that I am extremely opinionated and passionate about them. News to me (clearly, I am blind).

Oof. Petal five is all about money. This is where I felt that I learned the most. Growing up, my family never really talked about money, and to this day, they have been pretty hands-off in teaching me anything that has to do with the matter. I would say that my relationship with money is confusing, and I don’t understand many aspects of it at all. Learning about it and how to properly take care of myself as an individual has been something I am slowly learning on my own. And I am everything but good at it. But working through this petal and the exercises that went along with it, I feel closer to understanding that relationship and how I want it to look in the future.