Blog Topic #85 - How I Went From Very Shy to Less Shy

It was a two part process!

Part 1 - Grade 10. We all have to pick a semester of some kind of creative art for one of our course selections. Instead of musical instruments (which made sense since I was in the school band) I decided on drama instead. Because despite my introversion and quietness, there was a diva dying to get out. ;) I ended meeting some fabulous new friends in that class, and for the first time I was prancing around and dressing up with people that I felt comfortable around. It really built up my confidence, and I had a great time finding my voice and expressing myself.

Part 2 - 2005. Freshly graduated from post-secondary education and I landed a great job right out of school, at a multinational company. My boss was senior management, therefore I was suddenly rubbing elbows with high-powered executives while we talked about stocks and sipped expensive wine. Stranger upon stranger would waltz into my life, experts in their field with mounds of education and experience. In that sort of environment, I knew one thing: confidence was key. Maybe it was the company's culture as well (I remember people like the CEO asking me to call him by his first name), people were very professional but open at the same time. So I didn't approach the situation as me being the newbie in the midst of sharks. I saw the men and women around me as my peers, my equals, and interacted with them like it was no big deal. Sometimes, I would fly across the country and run meetings with teams of people I'd never met before. I was forced to be at ease in strange and new situations, and it paid off. Now, chatting new people up at a party is nothing compared to shmoozing with rich execs. ;)

Imagine Life 10 Years From Now

Last night I was talking with a friend about jobs and the market and education and he brought up a point that someone had raised at one of his management meeting. The point was this: when we were in high school and university, educators were trying to train us for jobs that didn’t exist yet. So by the time we’d entered the labour force, there was a slew of jobs for things we hadn’t even envisioned. I could see exactly where he was coming from… no one told me in high school that I could have specialized in CCS and HTML and become a web/graphic designer in my late 20s because the field basically didn’t even exist at that point. High school “computer class” involved antiquated programming languages and using Lotus 1-2-3. :P

And today, another friend of mine mentioned that her university was looking for a professor of Social Media. Seriously, SOCIAL MEDIA. A PROFESSOR. What kind of wonderful world are we living in!? ;) It’s a crying shame that there are some awesome careers out there that didn’t even exist three or four years ago, so there’s no real way for people above a certain age to get into them without taking time off for re-educating themselves.