Never Stop Learning

I hate to admit this, but I’m really glad I took this class that I didn’t think I needed and didn’t want to take. The “English at Work” class didn’t seem all that important for me – a non-traditional student who’s been through many interviews that resulted in jobs, and who formerly worked for a Career Services department assisting other students with resume creation and job search. It’s a one-credit-hour, one-hour-per-week, required-by-all-English-majors kind of class designed to help students find jobs and careers geared toward their major. I thought that my previous life experience, as evidenced by my resume, should have been enough. But I also always try to be teachable and open to new learning experiences.

No matter how much I think I know about anything, I know that there’s always somebody who knows more. I learned this valuable lesson early in my first “real” office job nearly thirty years ago. Confident in my clerical position, despite not having been to college, I knew what I knew and I was the best at what I knew I could do. That was my mindset… until I was wrong. Many times. For example, my boss would ask, Did you double check this typed document against the original? To which I firmly replied, Yes, absolutely, even though I hadn’t. I just believed that my first pass of typing it up was perfect enough, so of course it was as good as it could be. After several occurrences of letting my overly-assured-self fall flat before my superiors, I decided that taking the extra steps to double-check my work was better than the embarrassment of really, really being wrong.

That was one very simple example that led to my “be teachable” philosophy that I have lived by ever since. I also didn’t want to be “that” student who felt I was better than the other students around me. Just because I am older and have a fair amount of work and life experience to guide my decisions didn’t mean that there wasn’t plenty to learn alongside my fellow, and often much younger, students. And in many cases, I’ve learned from these students. I’ve had them as editors of my writing, workshop partners, and Spanish-learning mentors. We are all attending the University of Iowa for the same reason, with similar goals. The fact that there was such an age-gap between us never bothered me. Most of the time I didn’t think about it. So, why should I fight taking this class that seemed irrelevant and unnecessary. 

Obviously, I didn’t try to get out of taking this class, but I did arrive on the first day of class with the idea that it was stupid and a waste of my time. Once again, I found myself falling flat (figuratively) before my instructor, advisor, and fellow students. Sure, I’ve had success in interviewing, writing resumes, and finding employment. But not in English. Not positions geared toward what I want to do, become an Editor, rather than what I’ve always done, clerical work. When I started this semester and updated my Linked-in Profile, one of our early required tasks, I kept receiving information for clerical positions, despite the fact that I thought I made it clear in my introduction that I wanted to write and edit. In the weeks that followed, I learned how to create a better resume and profile that represented what I want for my future, and it’s starting to pay off. Once again, life experience has taught me to always be teachable.