Why I want to be a trainer

Why I want to be a trainer: this should have probably been my very first blog post, but here it is anyway at #5.

This is a piece that I wrote as part of an application to what Apple calls the In-Store Guest Trainer career experience.  This was 2012, before I started the Master's at Temple--before I even knew such a degree existed--and as much as I knew what I wanted to do, I had never thought about why.


Kevin Collison: Professional specialist

At no point during my formative years did I think that I might want to be a teacher. I found classrooms boring, and yearned for a more fast-paced work environment. I had always thought I would grow up to be a “creative” at an ad agency, hustling to dazzle people with catchy, persuasive, effective print ads and television commercials.
After a degree in advertising from Penn State and a year in a copywriting portfolio program in Chicago, I made the rounds and shared my portfolio with anyone who would agree to look at it.
What I learned in those meetings was that I was not cut out for advertising.
Rather than feeling lost and adrift, I started looking for my next opportunity to be great at something. Even today I am not sure how I expected to grow or what I expected to learn from a career with Apple. Having worked for the hotel on which Apple modeled its retail operations, I approached the role from a customer service perspective, and so I threw myself headstrong into learning all about the technical specifications of the devices, their features and benefits, and how to operate the software that comes with every new Mac or iOS device. Being a successful Specialist calls for teaching over telling, and so armed with breadth and depth of knowledge I evolved into a mentor for my peers, helping to ingrain best practices, product knowledge, and policies and procedures in new team members at our store.
While I never considered myself a teacher before, I have helped influence my team through my devotion to a kinesthetic learning method--learning through doing.    When I think about what else I would like to be as I grow up,  I  am drawn to those careers where I can  share my expertise with people to further enhance their own abilities--in a word, I want to  teach.
If I had come to any of the jobs I have held expecting a straight path between me and the destiny I thought I was chasing, those jobs would have been stepping stones and not rungs on a ladder. With an open mind and the initiative to be the best I can be at any job I have, I have used each of these experiences to train and grow myself to be better prepared for whatever lies ahead of me, wherever I may want to go.
I would like to close with one of my favorite observations, from Dr. Thomas Szaz:
"People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates."

I am not looking for myself in any role, I am creating myself.