Friday, July 16, 2021

I know more about prostates and blender design than any one person really should


I was talking to a friend of mine recently who, like me, makes her living in corporate communications. She started as a newspaper reporter (also like me) and has spent the better part of two decades communicating about power management products.

That's likely not what she was envisioning when she went to journalism school.

Likewise, when I was earning my degree in English and History at John Carroll University 30 years ago, I did not see myself spending all day thinking about cars, tires, and the future of mobility.

Such is the world of work nowadays. Things change, and we have to change right along with them.

Over the course of my career, I have had to build a working knowledge of a lot of really strange and different things, including (but certainly not limited to):
  • Insurance plan documents
  • The spectrum of human urologic disease
  • Intellectual property law
  • Airline labor disputes
  • Pediatric physical rehabilitation
  • Nonprofit organization management
  • Municipal broadband
  • The physics of blending
  • And now...tires
The bottom line, kids, is that as much as you plan, there's a good chance you have no idea what you'll be doing for a living 20 years from now. So learn everything you can about everything. Be curious. Read, ask questions, step outside your little world.

Because one day you, too, may be called upon to write 500 words on the latest advances in adrenal cancer. And trust me, when that day comes, you don't want to be caught flat footed.

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