today at work i let someone into a dressing room and they said “thanks” and half of me tried to say “you’re welcome” and the other half tried to say “no problem” and i ended up saying “your problem”
this post had me in tears
I was hoping the notes would be full of similar stories, but they’re not, so I’ll add my story for anyone else looking for more laughs:
I had to go to a library to pay a fee and I was practicing in the car between “I have to pay a fine” and “I have to pay a fee” and I walked in and firmly stated “I have to pee” and slapped a five dollar bill on the counter (the fee was like ten cents), and walked out. This was like three years ago and I still haven’t been back,
My friend was driving and we were almost past our turnoff so I tried to say “quick” and “fast” at the same time and I ended up screaming “QUACK” which ended up with him judging me very hard and missing the turn
Recently someone in class asked me how I was doing and I started off saying I was good but switched to I’m okay in the middle and ended up saying “I’m gay.”
Which, while kind of accurate, was not what I meant to announce to my classmate.
This Halloween I was handing out candy and a child said “trick or treat” and I smiled gave them their candy and apparently my mouth betrayed me and I said “Merry Christmas” and proceeded to sit down and look up to the sky for answers while their mother laughed at me :)))))
I was switching between “Bye Deanna” and “Goodbye” and I ended up saying “Go Die”
Sometimes I try to say “I fucking love you” but it comes out in the wrong order and then everyone’s uncomfortable.
When I first started my coffee shop job, I was still getting used to greeting customers as they came in the door. A man walked in, and in the jumble of trying to say, “How are you doing?” and “What’s up?” I ended up demanding “What are you doing here?!”
something really cool happened once at the office and i started to say “i’m so amazed” but halfway through my mind changed to “that’s really amazing” and i just ended up saying “i’m really so amazing”
one time i was out in the woods in the spring when the birds were just beginning to come out again and i went to say “i’m so pumped for the birds” and “i’m so hyped for the birds” and instead i said “i’m so humped for birds”
Once I was walking to school and there was a guy walking his dog and the dog came to me and started sniffing me and I was in such a good mood and when I passed by his owner I wanted to say like “hello” or “good morning” or “cute dog” or something like that and I ended up looking up at him, smiling real big, and saying “thank you”.
I was at the convenience store and I was going to buy a drink, but i dropped my keys and the drink when I got to the register so I got caught between “my drink!” and “my keys” and ended up screaming “MY KINK.”
I walked up to this register,in a target. When the cashier finished checking me out she said have a good day, and i wanted to say “You have a good day” and “You too” so it came out “You have a good do do”
I FUCKIN H HIT MY HEAD ON A CHAIR FROM LAUGHING TOO HARD AT THIS FUCKING POS T
There’s so many new stories on this since the last time I saw it and fuck I am laughing so hard I think I’m annoying my roommate
These are too damn good to pass up reading!
I once wanted to give someone thumbs up, but instead I flipped them off….
so one time a buddy and I are having some kind of joke argument, and eventually I slam both my hands down on the table and tried to shout “DO YOU WANT TO FUCKIN’ GO!?” but instead I ended up hesitating and just screamed “DO YOU WANT TO FUCK?!” in front of nearly my entire class in the caf. They still make fun of me so much they made a fuckin’ yugioh card complete with one of the most unflattering snapchat pics of me ever taken:
A story that may have relevance for others, or then again, maybe not:
When I was in college, about ten or so years ago, I was a history major. I wanted to learn to dance, so I joined a swing dance club on campus. To my surprise, this club had about twice as many men as women (in high school, the last time I’d tried dancing, the ratio had gone the other way–lots of girls, and boys only that you could drag by their ears).
But apparently, there had been some kind of word spread specifically to the STEM guys that dance was a way that they could meet girls.
So anyway. I joined the swing dance club, and met a few guys. And at one point, when socializing with the guys outside of dance class, one of them asked me what my research was on. (I had already established that I was an honors history student doing a thesis, just as he had established that he was an honors… I’m not sure if he was CS or Math, but it was one of those.)
So I gave him the thumbnail sketch of my research. Now, to be clear, an honors senior thesis, while nothing like what a graduate student would do, was still fairly in-depth. I had to translate primary sources from the original late-Classical Latin. (My professor said, basically, that while there were plenty of translations of my source material, that I’d only be able to comfortably trust them if I had at least made a stab at a translation of my own. And he was right.) And there was so much secondary material, often contradictory, that I had been carefully sorting through.
But I was able to sift it into a three-sentence summary of my senior thesis work, you know, as one does.
So I gave him that summary, and then asked–since he was also an undergraduate senior doing an honors thesis–what his research was on.
“Oh,” he said, “you wouldn’t understand it.”
Reader, I went home in a frothing rage. Because I had thought we were playing one game–a game of ‘let’s talk about what we’re passionate about!’– and he had been playing another game, which was, one-upsmanship. I had done my best to give a basically understandable brief of my research–and he had used that against me. As if my research, my painstaking translation, my digging through archives and ILLs of esoteric works, my reading of ten thousand articles in Speculum (yes, the pre-eminent medievalist journal in North America is called Speculum, I’m sorry, it’s hilarious/sad but also true), and then my effort to sum it up for him, was nothing. Because his research into some kind of algorithm or other was just too complex for my tiny brain to conceive of. Because I just couldn’t possibly understand his work.
Now, the important note here is that the person I went home to was my senior year roommate. She was a graduate student–normally undergrads and graduate students couldn’t be roommates, but we’d been friends for years, and the tenured faculty-in-residence used his powers for good and permitted us to be roommates that year. Anyway. My senior year roommate was basically… in retrospect I think possibly an avatar of Athena. She was six feet tall, blonde, attractive in a muscular athletic way, a rock climber and racquetball player, sweet but sharp, extremely socially awkward, exceptionally kind even when it cost her to be kind, and an incredibly brilliant computer science major who spent most of her time working on extremely complicated mathematical algorithms. (Yes, I was a little in love with her, why do you ask? But she was as straight as a length of rope, and is now happily married, and so am I, so it worked out.)
(Still, yes, she is my mental image of Athena, to this day.)
Anyway, I came home in a frothing rage to my roommate, the Athena avatar. And I said, “He made me feel like such an idiot, that I could sum up my research to him but his research was just too smart for stupid little me.”
And she shut her book, and smiled at me, with her dark eyes and her high cheekbones and her bright hair, and said, “If he can’t explain his research to you, then he’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.”
Now I hesitated, because I’d be in college long enough to have sort of bought into the ridiculous idea that if you couldn’t dazzle them with your brilliance, you should baffle them with your bullshit. But she said, “Look, I’ve been doing work on computer science algorithms that have significantly complicated mathematical underpinnings. What do I do?”
And I said, “Genetic algorithms–that is, self-optimizing algorithms–for prioritization, specifically for scheduling.”
“Right,” she said. “You couldn’t code them because you’re not a computer scientist or a mathematician. But you can understand what I do. If someone can’t explain it like that, it isn’t a problem with you as a person. It’s a problem with them. They either don’t understand it as well as they think they do–or they want to make you feel inferior. And neither is a positive thing.”
So. There.
If you are looking into something and have a question, and someone treats you like an idiot for not understanding right away… here is what I have to say: maybe it isn’t you who is the idiot.
ATTN: ALL COLLEGE STUDENTS EVERYWHERE PLS READ
HEED ATHENA AVATAR’S WORDS BBCAKES EVERYWHERE.
As an academic working in academia: this this this. Never buy into the elitist bullcrap of ‘oh, you wouldn’t understand.’ And never perpetuate that crap yourself, either out of pretension or even simple laziness. If you can’t explain it to a ten-year-old, go back and hit the books again cause you’re not there yet.
In the gifted community, it has become trendy to talk about “twice exceptional” kids who are both gifted and learning disabled. Many parents of gifted kids have come to realize that it’s possible to have reading, or math, or attention, or social, disabilities, and still be gifted.
Yet people still do not seem to realize that a gifted person can sometimes lack basic knowledge that someone their age might know. (Even though, if you’re busy reading about advanced calculus or philosophical problems or whatever, you have that much less time to spend on learning more “basic” facts).
According to some parents, gifted people can be bad at particular *skills,* but they still have to know everything.
…
When I was a child, I was afraid to ask about things I didn’t understand–whether it was how north/south/east/west worked and how they related to familiar concepts like left/right–or how to use a TV remote, which to this day still confounds me with its zillions of buttons–or how to put shampoo in my hair without getting it in my eyes.
Because I would be mocked.
It wasn’t just that my behavior would be criticized. Every parent has to tell their child when they do something that doesn’t measure up.
But no, there would be name calling. Words like “lazy” and “not paying attention” and “not listening” and “spoiled brat.” No one can learn from this. Except, apparently, gifted kids–we’re supposed to be able to learn from anything. And when I didn’t learn from this, when I attempted to explain that I wasn’t lazy or not paying attention or listening, that I was trying my best, and that I was a decent person thank you very much, I was called rebellious and defensive and a bad kid who refused to learn from criticism.
I would not be mechanically inept, with no sense of direction, today if I had been able to reveal that I didn’t know some fact or skill without being mockingly told I should know how to do it. With that sort of attack on your sense of self, you stop asking questions. You also start feeling inadequate.
I am a summa cum laude, honors graduate of one of the hottest universities in the country, I qualify for MENSA, but I lose my glasses or phone pretty much every day. I forget things (sometimes even important appointments). I do stupid things. I walk into furniture. We all do. I just seem to do it slightly more often than the average smart, well-educated person.
But thanks to the way I was treated as a child–which wasn’t intended to hurt me, by the way, it was just due to the thoughtless assumption that as a “smart kid,” I should “know better”–every time I do one of these things, I berate myself and feel like a worthless person.
The biggest obstacle in my way today is my own lack of confidence in myself. That little voice inside tearing me down and saying “you’re gifted, why can’t you do this, you must be stupid or not trying. You’re such a failure, just because you made one small mistake.” That voice that confronts me every time I write a job application, or think about applying to graduate school in preparation for a career where maybe 30% of people even set foot on the tenure track–if they’re lucky. By the time I can start pursuing my dream, I’m already exhausted from having to argue with and push aside these voices telling me I’m not good enough to make it.
I thought the gifted community had changed. I thought parents had stopped doing this to their kids.
But prominent members of it still do. Members who know that giftedness doesn’t mean being brilliant at everything. Members who at least theoretically know that twice exceptionality exists.
Not naming any names, but one such person posted:
Why is my son, who got accepted into the top school in #NYC, nonetheless a fool? I know he should be smarter, I have test scores! #gifted
Note the gratuitous name-calling (“fool”), alongside the most hurtful thing you can say to a gifted person (“I know you should be smarter, what’s wrong with you?”).
Perhaps I should have let this pass without comment, but I imagined this person’s child–certainly old enough and smart enough to read it should they be on Twitter–seeing it and feeling hurt in the same way I have for years.
(Parents of nonverbal kids say even more hurtful things than this, but they figure their child will never see it or understand it. Whatever the merits of this argument, that excuse isn’t even available to parents of smart teenagers).
My response was measured, I think, given the circumstances:
I hope he can’t read this. I still have emotional scars from my mom saying stuff like this to me. We’re not good @ everything 😦
The unnamed parent went on to explain:
14 yo should know letters require stamps. This is not skill someone is good at. This is dumb behavior that deserves mocking.
Of course a 14 year old “should’ know a stamp goes on the envelope, if they’ve ever seen anyone send letters in real life or in the movies. (Then again, virtually no one ever sends a letter any more, so it’s possible that a 14 year old today may never have seen it. But whatever, let’s assume for the sake of argument that every 14 year old knows how letters work in a digital age).
Did you, for even a moment, pause to wonder how this 14 year old must have felt about such an elementary mistake? They probably felt like a complete moron, maybe even a failure, as soon as they learned about their mistake.
Even if no one mocked them.
And if their parent is mocking them online, in front of total strangers (a *definite* unethical thing to do), you just know they’re saying worse in the privacy of their own home. Because everyone feels freer to say cruel things in private than in public.
Well, parents like this should know: One of the worst feelings is the shame at realizing you’ve made a mistake that no one like you–no one your age, your intelligence, your general knowledge of the world, whatever–is supposed to make. Your heart feels like it’s been stabbed and then it sinks down into your boots. You want to run away from yourself. Just being inside your own skin hurts, almost physically.
And yes, you can be gifted–heck, you can be highly, exceptionally, or profoundly gifted–and still make such mistakes. I know I have. And I’m still learning to forgive myself for it and move on with life.
Why is it not obvious to everyone that it is NEVER, EVER okay to make fun of someone for what they don’t know?
And no, it doesn’t matter how ridiculous it appears that a person doesn’t know something. First of all, even if the person should know it, mocking them doesn’t help them learn it, it just makes them hurt, and often want to defend themselves or escape from the experience, not learn from it.
There’s an additional problem, too: not everything that seems like it’s “obvious” or “everyone should know it” really is. Anyone who’s had a calculus or engineering professor who left out crucial steps in a proof because they’re supposedly “obvious” will understand this.
Or, consider: When I was five or six and my classmates were telling me how proud they were for starting to read chapter books, I didn’t get what the big deal was. I’d been reading real books for some time, and it never even occurred to me this was a milestone. Should I have mocked them for their pride in doing something I thought was so easy? Of course not, that would be cruel.
Well, I don’t know about this particular case, but many parents–including my own, who had little experience with kids–know about as much about what kids of any age “should” be doing as I knew then. Is it really worth causing one’s child such emotional harm?
One of the hardest things for me to accept–even though it’s pretty much the story of my childhood–is that generally kind, decent people who understand basic things about their kids’ minds, and parenting, can still do cruel things that leave emotional scars that last for years. Things that if they saw someone else say or do, they’d be horrified.
But somehow, it’s okay, because their child is gifted.
Their child must know and be able to do everything at at least average levels.
If not, they deserve to be mocked.
Can you imagine the pressure we feel as we internalize this unspoken message? (And yes, we do pick it up. We’re gifted, after all).
And then the experts wonder why we all have depression, anxiety, and other mental problems.
Giftedness should never be an excuse for emotional abuse. But so often, it is. And to me, that’s pretty much the ultimate gifted problem. Most of all, because it’s the one no one ever talks about.
We’re not learning machines, we’re people, and not all of our problems have to do with an inadequate educational system. It’s time to heal, it’s time to speak out, and it’s time to get the word out so future generations of kids don’t have to go through what we went through. If you have similar experiences of your own, please reblog and share, and spread the word. I don’t know if there’s anything we can do for this particular teenager, but maybe we can help someone else.
P.S.: Thank you to the unnamed parent for inspiring this insight, and fueling my determination to try to make things better for other gifted kids and adults. And to their child, my heart goes out to you and I hope that you never struggle in the same way I have.
God do I know this feel. I was really good at math as a kid if I was left alone – but as soon as someone hovered over me to watch how I did it, or told me to ‘show my work’, it crumbled and I couldn’t do it anymore – I just did everything in my head and it worked, but if I put it to paper it didn’t work anymore.
I also played several instruments in band, but could never read music. I still can’t, and I was called an idiot and other names by teachers for not being able to do that, despite being able to play multiple instruments perfectly well by ear.
I have very few memories of my childhood anymore, but I can remember pretty vividly being told ‘you’re smarter than that, why are you being so stupid/lazy’ many, many times.
Parents/caretakers who do this to children do not deserve to be around children at all.
Damn, this sure sounds familiar…
I’ve been thinking about this exact concept a lot over the last year or so, and one of my biggest issues is how much we, as society, conflate ‘smart’ with ‘capable.’
Just because I can do algebra in my head doesn’t mean I can remember to do my laundry when it needs doing.
Just because I can write a six-page paper in two hours doesn’t mean I can have a productive, satisfying conversation with a stranger at a party.
Just because I can read a long book in one day, or remember boat loads of trivia, or get perfect grades, doesn’t mean I can do all the daily tasks required to live alone.
And just because I’m gifted, doesn’t mean I know everything.
My parents, over the course of my life and to this day, have always gotten angry and impatient with me for being ‘so smart, and yet so stupid, ’ because things that seem like common sense to everyone else simply don’t occur to me at all. I’m thirty years old, and still lack a lot of ‘basic’ knowledge that all adults are expected to have.
So again, being gifted does not mean knowing everything about the world. If anything, it means the way our brains work affects the way we interact with the world, to the point where what is considered common knowledge is not so common.
I was gifted enough to be taking algebra and geometry in middle school and was able to read books of college level, but I kept getting lost in the morning during runs with my school’s cross country.
I would be able to trace my path back but it’d make me almost late for school and parents and coach were worried about why I’m not taking the set path like the other kids. The coach was giving clear directions after all, turn left at such and such street and then a right here, etc.
Except I never put together that the green signs showed the street names.
While I wasn’t berated for not knowing what should have been obvious information known way before I was 14, it still gets brought up sometimes 8 years later like its let’s all have a laugh at this silly thing medicmoth did.
There was definitely other times though, when something was supposed to be obvious and wasn’t to me that it was met with anger. These days, I have a lot of anxiety about doing things for the first time because I might do them wrong.
It’s funny you mention street signs, because I used to get confused about which direction the street signs indicated. Like, I thought instead of showing the direction of the street they were lying parallel to, I thought they were pointing toward the perpendicular direction. Thus, I interpreted signs in the opposite of the correct way.
I also could not understand the concepts of North, South, East, and West, and how they mapped onto the directions that made sense (in front of me, behind me, left, and right).
My parents used to worry I’d run out into the street and got hit by a car, if I let go of something and it blew into the street or found a cool rock, because I had no fear of cars. I now suspect I couldn’t see moving cars at all. That is, my eyes took in the information but my brain did not consciously interpret them as moving cars, or, if it did, did not send the information to my brain that they were moving fast and were dangerous.
If I had lived in most times and places in history, I probably would have died very young.
one thing I want to say today relates to my current job. (As you guys know, I’ve left off working in science labs to work an office job in sci comm. My role is kind of … nebulous and involves a lot of “oh, Elodie can help you with that, she does weird stuff. Train Elodie on that.”)
Because it’s an office job, the mentality is for everyone to present their workflows as incredibly difficult and skilled, requiring a lot of training and experience to do properly. Which is fair enough! These skills are difficult!
“Elodie, today we are going to train you to use… A HIGHLY COMPLICATED AND DIFFICULT WEBSITE INTERFACE. You will need to take a lot of notes and pay careful attention, because it is extremely advanced. ARE YOU READY”
“… This is WordPress.”
“…No it isn’t! it says something different at the top. And it’s very complicated, it’s not something you can just know already.”
“Nah son, don’t worry, it’s WordPress. I mean, God knows I don’t blog much, but I can manage me a bit of WordPress, it’s cool.”
“No. You can’t. Don’t worry, it’s very difficult. Now sit still and be trained on how to upload a photo to WordPress.”
“All right.”
—-
“Elodie, do you think that you can MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA? It is INCREDIBLY HARD and may involve THE HASHTAGS”
“… I think I’ll manage.”
—-
“Elodie, can you put a HYPERLINK in a thing? Think about it before you answer.”
“Is it like a BBCode kind of thing, with the boxy bracket things, or do you want it in HTML, with like angley bracket things?”
“It is a button that you press that says HYPERLINK.”
“I can do this thing for you.”
—-
“Elodie, can you write a punchy summary that will make people want to click on a special link that says “read more” to read all of the text?“
“Probably?”
—-
“Elodie, this is how to use TAGS on CONTENT. TAGS on CONTENT are important because – because of THINGS. Things that are too arcane and mysterious for anyone below the level of Manager to know.”
“Cool, I can tag stuff for you.”
—-
“Elodie, this is obviously a ridiculous question, but can you edit videos?”
“Not very well, and only if you want to make it look like there is sexual tension between characters from different forms of visual media, or perhaps to make a trailer for a fanfiction? Which is not necessarily a good use of my time and I’m not sure why I felt it was so cool to do to begin with…”
“What?”
“Actually, upon further reflection: no. No. Nope. I can’t edit videos. They’re completely beyond me. Not in my wheelhouse. Hate videos. Hate them. No innate skill whatsoever.”
“That’s what we thought”
—-
“Elodie?! You can use PHOTOSHOP?!”
“Yeah, I mean, I usually just use Pixlr. It’s free, it’s online, it’s powerful, you don’t have to download anything…”
“but you are not a GRAPHIC DESIGNER!!”
“Er… no.”
“Next you’ll be telling us you can MAKE AN ANIMATED PICTURE.”
“I mean, I haven’t really done a lot of it since Livejournal, and they weren’t that good anyway, but yeah… I can do you reaction images.”
“THAT IS WITCHCRAFT”
“Yes. Definitely.”
—-
What I’m trying to say is: a lot of people talk a lot of crap about what we Millenials do on the Internet, because there is NO CAPITALISTIC VALUE in the screwing around we do with our friends. “Ughh why are you ALWAYS on the computer?” our parents whined.
“How did you make the text go all slanty like that?” our bosses wonder.
We have decades of experience in Photoshop. We know how to communicate; we can make people across the planet care about our problems. We know how to edit media to make two characters look like they’re having the sexual tensions. We can make people read our posts, follow us, share our content. We run and manage our own websites – and make them pretty. We moderate conversations, enforce commenting policies, manage compromises, lead battles, encourage peace, defend ourselves from attack, inspire others, and foster incredible levels of communication.
We produce our art. We advertise our art. We engage with others through our art. We accept constructive criticism and dismiss destructive trolling of our art. We improve our art. Our art gets better.
We narrate our stories.
All by ourselves. Our pretty blog backgrounds, custom-edited themes, tasteful graphics, punchy content, clever gifs, our snappy putdowns and smart-ass text posts, even our familiarity with fonts and composition – all of these skills we’ve casually accumulated for fun/approval are MINDBLOWING LEVELS OF COMPETENCE IN THE WORKFORCE.
When these skills are sold to you – when they’re packaged and marketed, and when you pay to consume them and have the Elders rate you on them – they are incredibly valuable. They are Media and Communications degrees. They are marketing internships. They are leadership workshops. They are graphics design modules. They are web design courses. They are programming courses. We are good at this shit; we have it nailed down.
You can’t put “fandom” or “blogging” on your CV, but you deserve to. You should get this credit. You should claim this power and authority.
Claim these skills. They are valuable. They are important.
Everything you have ever done is a part of your powerful makings.
I want to second what elodieunderglass has to say here, because it’s so true. You want to buff up your resume or your LinkedIn page?
-if you know enough html to do <i>this is italic text</i>, then you understand HTML and can pretty much call yourself a Junior Developer
-if you ever wanted to customize your LJ or tumblr and copied someone’s CSS code and then went in and tweaked font color and added your own header image? You understand CSS and again, you can put Junior Developer in your LinkedIn title.
-if you can use twitter and tumblr and put hashtags and regular tags on stuff, you’re a Social Media Manager. If you can get people to follow you and comment back, you have Demonstrated Social Media Efficacy.
-if you can use Photoshop (or Pixlr!) to make five million pictures of Natalie Dormer really pretty, you are a Photo Editor.
-if you can migrate some of your Photoshop skills to InDesign, you are a Production Editor with demonstrable skills in Layout For Print Publications
-if you want to look even more impressive and pick up an easy job that mostly involves googling bits of code to copy and fuck around with, go play on CodeAcademy and get yourself qualified in not just HTML and CSS, but also JavaScript, Ruby, Python, and others. Again, this makes you a Software/Applications Developer.
The only reason you’re given the impression that these are jobs for really smart brogrammers with masters degrees in computer science is because scary jargon keeps people out. Look stuff up, and you’ll find out you already know a ton of this material. I promise you, you’re more qualified for tech/developer jobs than a lot of the people actually working at firms that focus on those kind of jobs.
^
Often in my job people ask me if I can do something, and if I respond with, ‘No, but I’m sure I could find out how,’ they look at me like my head just rotated 360 degrees. One thing about being on the internet in this age is that you have experienced how you can just google something and you’ll probably find a youtube tutorial.
Don’t know how to use the Puppetwarp in Photoshop? *20 minutes later and some cursing included* Okay, now I do.
Don’t know how to knit? *ten minutes later* totes pro.
A lot of people bag our generation but there’s so much to be said for the sheer amount of information we’re used to absorbing and parsing. Don’t underestimate that, either!
OK entry-level kids, listen. ‘I don’t know how to do this but just give me 20 minutes’ is probably the most important, career-advancing thing you can say at your workplace because not only does it show that you’re adaptable and proactive and any number of dumb buzzwords that happen to be popular in The Industry these days. BUT If you build up on it over time, it will also pretty much make you indispensable, which is so important in an unstable job market.
Consider this: unless you get a job with a super-successful startup where your boss is like 25, chances are you’re going to land in company where the higher-ups are in their 40s-50s, thus belonging to that particular generation that habitually puts down millenials for having No Experience of Real Life. Except in a workplace environment this means they expect that they have to train you on every single little thing, aka waste time and resources on you, aka see you as a soooort of useful nuisance who’s there to do the little menial jobs no one else wants to do. This is where the last to come first to go thing comes from really.
What your crusty 50+ y/o bosses don’t realize is that ‘being on the computer’ all day, you inherently develop a thing called rapid skill acquisition. Yeah, it sounds fancy (so fancy you can put it in your CV) but most of the time, as the previous comments point out, it just involves Google and YT tutorials. You’ll be surprised how many highbrow professionals don’t actually do this, b/c they reached the top and feel like they have a secure position and basically fall so behind on things that a 20 y/o intern can out-skill them, or quickly learn to out-skill them any day of the week. Most likely they’re not aware of this. And no, it’s not as out there as it sounds. Consider you’re talking to people who think you need training to use WordPress. Imagine what telling them you can use a blogging platform to create an easy to update professional looking website for fucking free will do to them. Imagine telling them you can make gorgeous graphics from scratch, update the company logo or design some rad business cards. THERE IS SO MUCH YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DO THAT THEY DON’T KNOW CAN BE DONE.
A couple of years ago I interned for a research centre where I did this all the time. Three weeks in they called me to sign an employment contract that tripled my pay and I got to go everywhere with them and meet important people in my field, it was great. My 23 y/o brother, who doesn’t have a single solitary hour of formal training in PR/marketing or IT in his degree, interned as marketing assistant for a small IT company and was so quick to catch on that they hired him after the internship and by the end of the year he’d already helped increase their turnover. Eight months, unpaid internship included, and he made them more money! That kid is never going to get fired!
Also learn some programming/web design. Seriously. I see these self-taught 16 y/o kids making gorgeous Tumblr themes from scratch and I’m like. You are al fucking wizards. Not even out of highschool yet and you’re pretty much set up for a job that potentially pays in the 6 digits.
You are smart and you are creative and you are amazing! You need to be brave and confident and capitalize on that because you’ve got what it takes and more. Fuck the jargon, you’ve got the skills.
queerhomestuck 