Post College: Versatility

Being versatile does not mean being indifferent.

For many post college graduates, we are faced with a job market that reads us for quality, for difference, but mostly for versatility. Being capable of doing many things competently means you are definitively a versatile person. Competency is being able, but it is more than that.  It is being able to do something satisfactorily.  This something - be it a task or a product - must be done to the judgement of another.  This other person is superior not only in position, but also in completing the same task or product (you, as an employee, must try to believe that second part *it helps).

Now you might wonder, where am I going with this?  The formatted process appropriately titled "growing up" does not ask us to be versatile. You follow the routine because it is what you are taught.  The routine has a list: do your chores, go to school, play a sport or an instrument, or both, do some community service, respect your parents, or whoever is in charge. So for over twenty years of your life you are learning a routine.  The routine does not ask you to be versatile.  Sometimes it asks you to be indifferent.  Indifferent to needing to feel included. Indifferent to eating certain foods because you are told that you have to eat them. Indifferent to hurtful remarks from other students or other people in general.  You are taught that your feelings of inadequacy might be well-founded if you do the "wrong" things and might be overrated if you do the "right" things.  

During our teenage years, we begin to realize that those we respect as "superior" do not always do a satisfactory job.  We see faults.  If I saw my mom do a task that I was taught by her not to be a satisfactory way to accomplish the task and I told her; she'd remarked in a tired manner, "well Hannah, when you have kids, you can do it better, but until then deal with it."  You learn as a teenager or young teenager that not only are things not going to go your way (you should have learned that when you were a small kid), but that those who are "in charge," don't have all the answers.  In fact, sometimes, they don't have any answers or reasons behind why they do something.  After your teenage years, you enter the young adult years.  You learn that there are reasons, mostly financial to why you do or don't do something.  You learn that sometimes you cannot conquer all the tasks that you have set aside for yourself to accomplish.  The pressure never ceases as you are learning to cope with your feelings of inadequacy.  You learn about the job market and the workplace.  Two of the most common and most noted items in our world are not truly defined or taught until our early twenties.  You learn that in order to survive that you must be devoted to your tasks, more so, to accomplishing them in a way not commonly seen or more quickly than another would do so. The reason being that you need to be noticed.  You need to be versatile and you need to be thought of. 

Thought of, in the workplace, in a positive light is your key to success.  However, in order to truly grow, you must never become "indifferent" to your tasks.  Being unconcerned equates to negligence.  If you find yourself being indifferent to your daily tasks either at your workplace or in your life, you must talk with people.  You must talk to people that you do not know.  You do not have your close friends around you once you graduate college.  You do not have the college environment around you, which made you free to do what you wanted, when you wanted to.  You must take orders again and you must do them well.  It is not like your mom telling you to clean your room and you say you will (only it takes you like 5 weeks to do so).  You are in the workplace and must do something to the order of another individual who might have a completely different philosophy on everything! So talk to everyone and anyone about everything. Talk about your favorite fish, your worst day; write in a journal - write down everything.  The pressures will appear.  The pressure to "make something of yourself" or to "do something great" - when you realize that you can be versatile, you won't have feelings of inadequacy (or at least the feelings will be more manageable).  You will realize your strengths which all are greater than your strongest weakness.  Because let's face it, you are here still.  Your strength has to be greater than all your weaknesses combined because you are still living. 

So recognize those strengths.  Take a minute.  Think about something that just happened.  You usually think about how it made you feel...be versatile...think about the start and what dictated the feeling to arise then think about why you or the other person ended it. What was your strength that got you through it?  It can be as simple as not re-stocking the toilet paper and someone getting upset, or it can be way more complex.  When you think about what dictates the certain feeling to arise, you will say because I don't like it when this happens as an effect of this.  The cause and effect is a process that you have to think about for everything in life.  In my opinion, cause and effect does not set it till your twenties.  Being indifferent to the effect is your greatest downfall! So recognize your weaknesses and how your strengths counteract them.  When you truly think about all the pressures you are facing as a post college person, recognize that you were just recently prepared for your start in the workplace.  You have a "superior" person who judges all your moves, and more often than not, does NOT give you the benefit of the doubt.  The biggest advice I can give you, besides not starting your own business, is to never become indifferent to your tasks.

The current job I am at, I absolutely love! However, I recently realized most of the reasons as to why my previous job was not right for me.  By completely changing to a new job environment, I recognized my  strengths.  I don't think that you need to change your current job as a young post college graduate to find a job where you can recognize your strengths, but you do need to recognize your strengths so that you can always seek the most efficient and most versatile way to complete a task or product.

I wish I could tell you that learning how to master the workplace is as easy as the first time you dispute a grade with your college professor, but it is not.  Just do not become indifferent.  You are so much more than indifference. You are the difference.  You would not have been hired, and never will be hired until you recognize that simple statement: You are the difference.