Self-help
Being a little kid is like being on a quiz show. All day long people are asking you what things mean, if you can do things, and a million other tests of knowledge and skill. It gets better as we get older, but not much. At least for you in college, those tests are compartmentalized into identifiable evaluative instruments. And then you get the sheepskin, and finally you can start asking the questions. Or so I thought.
Now Al Bundy (married with children), I find myself peppered with questions and tasks all day long. "Dad/Honey, what does this mean? Can you fix this? How does this work?" etc. I purposely avoided playing video/computer games in my youth, as I knew I would never rest until I found the princess (an old Mario reference, though Mario has made a comeback so maybe even the youngsters know it), but now I am expected to know everything from setup to game play for every system and every game. I didn't pay as much attention to my dad as I should have when he showed me how to do stuff, but now I am expected to fix every invention since the industrial revolution. I chose a Mac computer in the 1980s since I didn't want to learn DOS and technical computer stuff, but now I'm supposed to be the computer geek. And the list goes on. And on.
These family members (and sometimes coworkers, friends, etc.), don't seem to realize that most of us know only what we know, and we only know that with which we have experience. So if your computer questions involve fantasy sports, PowerPoint presentations, or bad college administration systems, maybe I can help. But the odds are I not only don't know the answer, I probably don't even fully understand the question. So to try to answer your question I'm going to have to stumble around and learn something new or more likely just get lucky and click something that works (if I don't make it worse or break it). Even when I tell you that I don't know how, you still expect me to do it. So why is it that you impose upon others instead of imposing upon yourself?
Labels: Self help, self reliance
posted by Dead Man Blogging at
10:07 PM
2 Comments:
I find it exasperating sometimes that we have these amazing tools at our disposal- tools that didn't even exist a little over ten years ago- that can literally answer 98% of your questions and some people still prefer to not use it in lieu of bugging their family, friends, or co-workers for the answers to very simple questions. I'll entertain it when an older adult or a kid asks a question that can easily be looked up, but there are a surprising number of people who work in the IT field in their early 20s and 30s that can't do their own Google or Youtube research. The nice thing about this is if you're capable of looking things up, you can really impress people with the level of knowledge you've acquired through 2 minute Google searches.
This is one of the areas of life where I 100% agree with that old adage of giving a man a fish versus teaching him to fish. The best thing you can do for someone is to show them how to do their own research.
You're still relevant bringing up the Mario reference is still topical too, a surprising number of those old video game franchises from my childhood are still kicking around and making bucketloads of money. Though I overheard some teenagers at best buy referring to the N64 and Playstation 1 as "retro systems" and I finally knew what it felt like to be old.
"You're still relevant bringing up the Mario reference is still topical too"? Yikes, no more post writing first thing in the morning. I mangled the art of grammar so badly they'll have to check the dental records to recognize it.
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