Many years ago, I found myself young, single with no education or training and I needed a job. I was able to land one through a temporary agency as a customer service representative just answering phones. But that was all the “in” I needed.
I was desperate to earn a paycheck so every time someone asked me if I could do something, I always said yes. I knew nothing of Customer Service but how hard could that be? I knew nothing about the Office Products, but when asked if I could create an Excel spreadsheet, I said “Of Course!” with all the confidence in the world. Then I ran to the library grabbed an Excel for Dummies book and read as fast as I could staying up most of the evening.
I went into work a little blurry eyed, but I realized very quickly that there was a little help button and if you didn’t know how to do something, you could always click the help icon and write your question and it would give you an explanation on how to perform the function. How easy is that? I felt like an expert!
Honestly I did quite well, but only by the Grace of God. I made one mistake which is a very common mistake that people still make today and that is when they are sorting, they do not grab all of the data in all columns and cells and only sort the one column making the data spreadsheet now incorrect. I spent a whole weekend at the library fixing it before anyone knew.
Then I was promoted and given more projects. Do you know PowerPoint too? “ Of course I do, I love it!” Then I did my run to the public library and learned what I needed to know. After I learned a few items that I needed to get a raise, I went back to the temp agency and asked to take the other tests, I had forgotten to take such as Excel and PowerPoint. Wow I had just climbed the ladder.
Needless to say I am involved in my daughter’s homework. In fourth grade, they are actually given a lot of homework that takes me a minute to absorb. Our rule is that there is not a weekday where we don’t have homework. So there is no asking, “Do you have homework tonight?” There is always reading or something that needs to be worked on. It might help that I am in online college so homework time means both of us.
These days you can learn pretty much everything you need by way of the internet but the important thing is to keep learning.
