We Learn by Doing

My first job was working at a ski shop in high school. It was a fun job where I was around something I loved. Unfortunately it didn't pay that great and so when my Dad got me a job working for a small computer software company, I jumped at the chance. Little did I know that the company would grow become one of the largest software companies in the world. The company was Oracle.

My first year at Oracle was spent doing data entry. I had taken several typing classes in school and was a fairly fast typist. By the end of that first year on the job I was typing 120 words per minute. When you spend four hours a day typing, you get to be pretty fast.

Towards the end of the first year, I was getting pretty tired of typing all day and so the company moved me into Technical Support. That meant I answered a phone all day long and helped people with their computer problems. The only issue was that I was answering questions about Oracle on Unix and I had never even used Unix.

I shared an office with another technical support guy and he would listen to my half of the conversation. Then he would give me pointers on how to help the customer. It was a system that helped me learn both Unix and the Oracle database. For my first couple of phone calls, I would repeat what my more experienced co-worker told me. He then suggested that rather than repeating, I should also try some of the commands I was passing onto the customers. I gave it a shot and was amazed at what I discovered. I could now see the answers to some of the other questions I was being asked.

This past week I was given the task of teaching a quick course on how to use a new software program. There were several people in the room and one was a complete computer novice. I had her sit in the driver's seat as I gave instructions. Experience had taught me that having her control the computer would teach her more than if I input the information. I don't think I was completely successful in my instruction, but I'm sure she learned more than if she had simply watched.

When someone shows you a neat new feature or you see one of those Windows 7 ads, you might want to experiment and play around on your own computer. As Captain Kirk once said in an episode of Star Trek, "We learn by doing." That is especially true with computers.