That Schnepf Guy and Spider-Man wanna-be

guys, you know what this means??

Troubleshooting basic software and hardware issues is something that you can put on your resume. So is rapid skill acquisition, for clicking around in a new program until you know how to use it. These are what we’re good at, Millennials. Don’t feel ashamed of it.

My mom and I hear a song on the radio with a female singer and the chorus is something about lilies growing on a hill. The radio doesn’t identify the artist.

When we go home, my mom will google, “Who sings the lilies song?” and if the song is popular enough the answer will be somewhere on the first page, maybe. 

The Google thing especially is a skill that will carryover into the workplace and potentially bring you praise from your supervisors and certainly help you out at home, like in the lyrics example above. I work as a reference librarian in a public library, which means all of my coworkers are information experts and spend a huge chunk of their day looking things up. And despite only working their a year, I can find the answers to “simple” questions almost instantly, whereas it may take my coworker a few minutes or more to find the same thing. This isn’t to say she isn’t smart or good at research—she’s probably the most skilled person I know in that area—it’s just that I understand modern keyword search terms better. We Millennials (and Homelanders) just understand the best way to formulate a search, because it’s something we do all the time and have always done.

It’s the same thing for computer troubleshooting. It’s not that we’re all computer experts, it’s just that we have knowledge of what “usually” works and know the different little things to check. This is something we grew up with, figured out along the way, or, depending on how old we are, maybe even learned in school. Personally, I was lucky enough to be in the weird middle ground when basic computer skills were actually taught in schools, right in the sweet spot where computers were just popular enough that we might have one at home and just before they became normal and common knowledge. That wasn’t an option for our parents or anyone older, because the technology just wasn’t around for them to be familiar with early on. 

*Common enemy hits me for 60% of my health*