Often I find myself thinking about the skills I use on a day to day basis and the skills I've learned in school. I was never a big fan of classes that revolved around theories. When have theories ever helped anyone? I had to take a class at UB titled, Communication Theory. It put me to sleep every Tuesday and Thursday for 2.5 hours. It was awful and absolutley useless.
There are so many curved balls thrown at us everyday and knowing how to even begin assesing a spontaneous situation is one of the most critical skills you can learn. Below is my list of classes they should teach in college to assist with real life dilemmas:
1. How to File for Unemployment 101: What you need to know to get your weekly check
2. Networking: Making the Most of Your Contacts
3. Garage Sale Management: Knowing what to charge for your junk
4. Negotiating Your Salary: Determining how much your worth and asking for it
5. Financial Planning for People Who Hate Numbers: The Basics of 401K & IRA's
6. Dealing with Difficult People at Work: How to keep things cool when you want to get violent
7. Living Within Your Means: How to fight the urge "To Keep Up with the Joneses"
8. How to relocate to a new city
9. Identifying careers that pay well and will always be in need
10. Mistakes to avoid in your 20's
These are good. Have you considered writing a column for the Washington Post?
ReplyDeleteNumber 9 -Identifying careers that pay well and will always be in need is a tough one. That always changes thru the years. When I graduated from highschool I wanted to be a teacher but there was not a need for them. In fact there were too many. I went to college and studied architecture. Two years into my degree I learned the awful truth that there wasn't much of a need for them so I switched to fabric design. When I got out of college all the mills were closing, the designs were being done by computers and the work was shipping overseas! No jobs! So then I switched to secretarial work and typing. That worked for a while but eventually even that got more scarce with the changing office place and everyone doing their own work on computers. Hmmm . . that leaves bookkeeping. So I trained for that! It has kept me in coffee and donuts for some years but in this particular recession its not easy to find a job for a numbers person. I am down to two other options that still need workers and seems to always need workers - 1) something in the IT profession or 2) something in the health profession.
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