What I like about my current gig in Cube City is how much I've learned in just one year. My career was in "been there, done that" mode for many years. I felt like I knew everything.
When I started my job at the ad agency, it was clear that I knew nothing.
The learning curve can be really painful. My first job was probably the most painful of all because I truly knew nothing. I didn't even know what a database was -- and once I found out, I realized I didn't care to know.
Then I moved on to my second job, where I had to deal with a fair amount of bullshit in addition to the learning curve. I sat in a large room with one of those IT gurus. Circa 1998. Internet just now becoming a big deal. One day, as the IT guru was surfing the web and trying to entice me to play the online version of the You Don't Know Jack game, he slammed his hands on his desk and exclaimed, "I can't believe they didn't give me a cookie."
What the hell was he talking about? Had he forgotten to take his meds again? I offered to bring cookies the next day, which led to him exclaiming that he couldn't believe I didn't know what a cookie was. We didn't have Wikipedia back then. I was back in my "What is a database" learning curve mode.
I got an education there in that big room with nasty old orange shag carpeting. And now I'm in a much cleaner and nicer office space where I'm learning all kinds of new terms. I'm also seeing new people come and go who know nothing...which makes me feel like I know something.
Perhaps I should entice the newbies to play a game of You Don't Know Jack. I'll bring the cookies.
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When I glance back over my memory of the learning curve, I remember getting stuck on "one off." To this day, no one has sufficiently defined it for me such that I can tell you when a one off has happened. I ran into "granular." My mind kept flipping to granola, granola, and wondering if granola was granular.
Then I found "breadcrumbs." And "banners." And all manner of Netty things like alt tags, interstitials, meta tags and rich media. I thought I knew the King's English when I came in the door. But I didn't. I knew nothing. Somebody had rewritten all the words when I wasn't looking.
And I was like a chick in search of a breadcrumb, pecking away at the keyboard. Looking for the definition of "wireframe."
Thank God I can still recognize a keyboard. Or is it a keypad?
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