Funny Thing About That Old Resume

Last week at a grant-writing meeting between me, the head of special ed. in our district, the school's nurse and the librarian from Albany Medical Center, we were asked to submit a resume with the grant.

Tonight I dug out that old resume that hasn't seen the light of day in 14 years!  First off, I was stunned to realize it's been that long since I first stepped into the job in East Greenbush after 17 years at Ichabod Crane.  The second interesting item I came across was the section on "technology experience."  My, my, my how that has changed.  There was so much more to add in just the Internet-based category alone, i.e. blogging, social networking, etc. not to mention all the new gadgets in technology that needed to be included.

When I first started teaching back in the early 80s I remember thinking to myself, "Computers? I am frightened about this new machine."  All I saw in my mind were my college buddies slaving over their computer programming homework and thinking at the time, this is not for me.  Now these PET computers were making their way into our classrooms and we were forced to learn to use them.  Boy, was I wrong.

Today, I don't know how I'd live without this Dell computer with Microsoft 7 and all of the wonderful things it can do for me from writing up a resume without having to use white-out or carbon paper to uploading and scanning the latest photos from the Daytona 500 weekend from my iPhone.

Who would have thought 31 years ago I would be writing a blog, surfing the Net for a present for my Mom's 77th birthday rather than running to the store or keeping up with friends and "not-so-friends" from the high school years on a social network?  It's truly amazing and I'm so happy to be in a field of work that forces me to keep current with all the new technology that is still evolving.

I don't want to be my grandmother who couldn't figure out how to work her new turntable back in the 70s nor do I  want to be my mother who refuses to use the computer for more than e-mail and an occasional game of Solitaire.