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Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study. Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life. – Henry L. Doherty
Anyone who has been looking for a job knows that there are few openings, especially for people with college degrees. Seventeen million college graduates are doing jobs that don’t require a degree. Additional folks are working at jobs that require a four-year degree, but they never get a chance to put into practice the skills they have learned. Further, many skills that are needed on the job are not learned in high school or college. So many of our students have been taught to take tests, but not to think critically or actually learn the subjects.
Add to that the fact that student loan debt is at an all time high, even higher than what we owe on credit cards.
Maybe it’s time we rethink how we handle education.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a big fan of college. I hold both a bachelors and masters degree. At the University of Texas I took courses that helped me discover what I really enjoyed. But for a long time, I have been among a group of people who think that for most students a two-year program makes more sense. For many students, landing a job after those two years with companies that value their employees is a much better plan. Some of those companies may provide tuition reimbursement so that students are not left with massive student loan debt. See this TED Talk by creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson for more about how much a degree is worth now.
I am so excited about a new venture – Skillshare, a community where anyone who has information to share can pass that knowledge to others. There are plenty of places where you can take classes online, but as someone who has taught both traditional classes and online classes, I believe that something truly magical happens when a group of learners get together with a teacher who genuinely enjoys helping. Everyone learns from everyone else.
I have been selected to be a Community Ambassador for the San Antonio area for Skillshare. I am recruiting people who want to share their knowledge and people who want to learn. Skillshare classes are primarily about the things we are passionate about, the things that make us want to get up in the morning. Some of us are lucky enough to have jobs that meet those needs. Some of us have jobs that meet other needs, and we fulfill our passions outside of work. Skillshare will give us the opportunity to test out our interests.
Why is it so important to find our passions? We need to shift education in order to produce creative thinkers. I believe that Skillshare may be one of the steps to achieving this radical shift.
Want to help me create this shift as a teacher or a learner? Join me at our first quarterly Show & Tell event on Tuesday, June 14 from 5:30 – 7:30 pm. (I’m still working on the venue; details will be forthcoming.) Get a taste of training, have some drinks and some fun, meet other learners and teachers, and help start a revolution. If you can’t make the event, but still want to be a part of the effort, drop me an email or call.
“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” – Jerry Seinfeld
Does the very idea of presenting to a group of people strike terror in your heart? What is it about a group presentation that makes most people so nervous?
Most business people have no problem talking to one or two people at a time. At networking gatherings, only the shyest among us will do what I call “hovering over the hors d’oeuvres.” We tend to feel comfortable soon after engaging even complete strangers.
Add a few people to the audience and our blood pressure starts to rise. It turns out that Seinfeld was wrong; public speaking is not the number one fear, but for anyone who is nervous about presenting, the fear certainly is in the top ten.
Why are we so afraid? Usually, the anxiety goes back to childhood. Something happened, usually early in life, that made us feel judged and embarrassed, and we have carried that forward to our adult lives. When we can pinpoint that first event, we usually can work through the fear.
I know this is true for me. I was at a dance recital as an “overdeveloped” 11 year old. I won’t go into the details here, but I heard people in the audience laughing at me. I had my suspicions confirmed when one of my neighborhood friends told me, “Crystal, they were laughing at you.” I swore that I would never get up in front of a group of people again.
In school, I dreaded anytime I had to deliver a report in front of the class. In college, the panic was worse. It took a long time to work through my worry. At one point, I remember my knees actually knocking.
Once the belief about yourself takes hold, especially if it happened in childhood, you align with that belief. Your experience becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your current experience does not cause the emotion. It is just the opposite – the feeling causes the current situation.
Think about that first event. What were your feelings at the time? Was it really the event itself that caused the fear? Or was it something that happened during the event that you now have control over? If that had not happened, would you have been embarrassed?
If you can look honestly at the root cause and understand the difference between then and now, you’ll be well on your way to overcoming your nerves.
If you need more help getting over the fear or simply want to refine your presentation skills, please join me at Presenting without Panicking. (See Lunchbox Workshop.)
The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want. – Ben Stein
If you find that you are not receiving responses to your email messages, I may have discovered one of the problems.
I recently met a man who is in charge of volunteers at a local non-profit. I had been planning to volunteer with this organization for the last few months, so this meeting presented the perfect opportunity to offer my training services. I handed him my business card and wrote on the back what I wanted to provide.
Two days later, I received an email from the volunteer director. He said he was glad to have met me and appreciated my interest in the organization. He provided some details about the volunteer opportunities with this non-profit and finished his email by saying that he looked forward to discussing my involvement.
It was obviously a canned response, and although it would have been nice to have received something that responded to my particular offering of providing training, the template aspect did not bother me. What bothered me was that there was no call-to-action. There was no “next step” for me to take. He could have said, “please contact me at your earliest convenience” or “please fill in the volunteer form on our website” or “I will call you next week to set up an appointment.” Instead I was left feeling like we would have to run into each other on the street to move this relationship forward. I wonder how many volunteers are lost because of this missing request.
I shouldn’t give this guy too hard a time. He is not alone. We all send out emails all the time without thinking about what we want to accomplish.
If you want to create email messages that get a response, the most important step you can take is to decide what you want the outcome to be when the recipient reads the email. If you don’t provide your readers with the next step, the email will sit in their in-boxes, unanswered, largely because there was no question to answer.
Look back over some of the emails you have sent. Were you clear in your purpose? Did you ask for the sale? Did you move the process forward? How could you have ended the message that would have made it easy for the recipient to take action?
If you want to learn additional ways to create messages that deliver results, come to this month’s Lunchbox Workshop.
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