Yesterday, I knew all the answers

A long time ago and far away in another world you discovered computing. It was fun and you enjoyed working with it. You felt comfortable using computers and software. Maybe you were a student or even a staff person when you decided to find a way to spend more time with computer technology. You applied for a job in User Services.

You got the job and became part of an organization that dealt with computing all the time. Your responsibilities required you to learn more and more about computing and you found you enjoyed doing this. Then you were assigned the responsibility of helping customers directly. The customers liked you and you responded well to their questions. The customers got good answers and you felt really satisfied with your job. The job was becoming even better!

Management liked what they saw you doing and expanded your responsibilities. You saw the new responsibilities as encouragement to do even more and better things. You accepted the challenges and took on the new tasks. You were able to handle the new responsibilities well which lead you to even more interaction with customers. You were now getting so good helping customers that you were asked to put together a training class, which you did. You discovered you liked teaching and helping several customers at one time. You developed another class, and then another and in doing so learned even more.

You were now making a name for yourself and customers were seeking you out. The other User Services' staff started coming to you for help with their problems. You liked this attention and to make sure you didn't loose your new found importance you worked even harder at solving problems and learning new pieces of the technology. You were on a roll! You had found your niche!