I sense that today's science might be anti-intellectual. Certainly, an arts degree is not seen as very practical and useful. I, for instance, hold arts degrees, and family members and acquaintances sometimes indicate that they do not understand the skills this education has brought me, through study and related work experience. My education has brought me many new experiences, in which I have attained extensive knowledge and skills. This attitude really rubs me the wrong way, so I want to set the record straight. I can do that on my own blog. Here I am going to set forth an inventory of my skills with examples of how I have acquired or used them during the course of my life. The reader will see that I have a wide range of skills. Before I present my list, may I recommend that you, too, give your skills and related experiences ample thought. It may serve you well to compose and review your own list. This is what I teach some of my senior students; in fact, I thought about this topic because I have been teaching a job preparation course to students of a secretarial studies program. We want to help seniors line up employment for the institution's, government's students' and teachers' benefit. Communications IT: PC and Mac operations; wide variety of experices from admin support to academic work word processing; admin support, education materials prep, correspondence spreadsheets; educ & other data management, work and meeting schedules and organizational planning desktop publishers; editing, publicity production, news letters; e-pubs prep schedulers; meetings, consultations, work, interviewing, calling client registrations; air travel & conference check-in, courses data collection and coding; research projects, sales management editing; Adobe and MS programs, admin support work Smartphone apps social networking; Facebook, LinkedIN, Reddit, personal blog assessment tools; career programs, teaching syllabus and grades entry; university teaching website design; building my own site, contributions to Wikipedia and Imdb radio; recordings, live shows operations Text: academic writing; conference proceedings papers, journal articles, newsletters, study, teaching composition classes, creative writing; novels, short stories, creative non-fiction, poetry business writing; reports, memos and letters for admin and education work editing; reviewing translations, study editing wie reading; for pleasure, work and research Oral: presentations; teaching, conferences, workshop leadership, radio hosting, office reception linguistic; 4-skills competency in 3 foreign languages, knowledge of language acquisition and teaching Interpersonal relations communication; teaching, office reception, organizing social events courtesy body language: presenting (calmness, suitability, openness, power) cultural awareness and sensitivity Flexibility change; successful adaptation to changing jobs, locations, times, and roles cooperation; coworker, internal, and external relationships exposure to various cultures; living and studying abroad; teaching immigrants and foreign students, extensive travel Social issues and relations; study and practice (research, discussion) in social sciences, education and social action, activism Knowledge; research, reading, summarizing, analysis, classification and organization, communicating, advising multidisciplinary background; language, social science and activism, education, writing and publishing multicultural approach; language study and teaching, travel, participation in international conferences |