Something that surprised me is...

Service Year 100 Challenge #2 – Learning a New Skill

Doing a Service Year is an amazing opportunity for on the job training while helping to reinvigorate high-need communities. This year, on the New York Civic Engagement Team, I learned to use a combination of power tools and computer software services in order to plan service days in the New York City area. For one, I worked with chop saws and circular saws to prep wood for building benches; I also used Microsoft Excel for managing supply orders and keeping track of inventory. And just to be clear, learning to use Microsoft Excel was definitely the more intimidating task.

Why am I saying this? For Service Year 100, we are given Service Challenges to encourage us to make our Service Year as deliberate and intentional an experience as possible. For Challenge #2, Service Year Alliance partnered with LinkedIn and gifted us a one-year subscription to LinkedIn Premium and told us to take advantage of LinkedIn Learning: a catalog of online video courses to develop professional skills ranging from appropriately using humor in the workplace to Wordpress analytics. Through this, we needed to learn at least one skill.

I looked at the list of course's available, saw Excel 2016, and thought to myself, "Oh god, please not this again," and started learning about Microsoft Outlook 2016 instead.

And while I was skeptical about how much I could learn about a mail program that every PC had, I was actually stunned by the results. I obviously knew how to write and send an email, but I was not familiar with the calendar functions that came with it. This turned out to be a lot more flexible than the calendar on my phone and transferred seamlessly to my PC. The end result? Not only did I find myself becoming more familiar with the tools on my computer, I learned how to better utilize the programs I have to help me stay organized for this year, and I'm willing to bet many after it.

Alright Excel, I'm coming for you next...probably.