Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

Overcoming TC

My name is Miranda Ditmore and I was born TC, or Technologically Challenged. I do think part of my aversion to technology was nature, as my strengths and interests lie in liberal arts. However I think the majority of the blame goes to my mom, who’s severe TC impacts everyone around her, especially me. She tries to mitigate the impact by never buying new gadgets. Aside from a Mac she gets from work and her IPhone 5 our apartment is free of things such as a TV, DVD player, game consuls, house phone, speaker, stereos, even alarm clocks, which only reinforced my weakness.

While this way of life did take a toll on me, such as when I thought my phone was broken for 6 months but it was really on do not disturb, or when I couldn’t figure out how to turn the Spanish subtitles off the of Netflix the first year I got it, it has never disrupted my life enough to motivate me to seek help. College helped a little, as I learned enough beginner skills such as the basics of excel and how to fix the internet to pass under the radar, but it was still a weakness I fretted over frequently.

I knew I couldn’t live this way forever. So when my internship asked who wanted to take over the AV work, I immediately spoke up. I admitted I didn’t have experience, but they said it wasn’t too difficult, and they would train me and one other intern so that the work would be split up. My first couple of training sessions I sat there nodding along with utmost confidence, all while cursing myself in my head that I didn’t even know the difference between an HDMI and an XLR cable. After about a week of rehearsing steps and terms in my head, things started to click. By the time we left the New York office and headed to Brown University, where all my AV work would be done, I was fully confident running the show on my own, and could properly explain the steps to someone with no previous experience.

Motivated by the short time it took me to learn tech work I had previously been so intimidated by, I made sure I went to all the tech trainings I could during Training Camp. This included sessions in things such as excel, google sheets, UX/UI design, and google analytics. In addition, I tried to practice my skills in excel, power point, and other applications whenever they overlapped with my work responsibilities.

Now that I am entering my fifth and final week at Brown, I’ve noticed how much more confident I’ve become doing technical work. I used to shut down all things technology because of my TC, which prevented me from even trying. The reality is you can learn anything, and there is nothing wrong with being in the beginning stages of developing a new skill. With the help of great co-workers who trained me, and Google, I managed to go from a girl who broke her flip phone cause she flipped it too aggressively to an intern people call for AV help. Morale of the story; if I can overcome TC, so you can you.