I’m dreading this because I feel like it will be like pulling teeth to tease out all of “My Favorite Transferable Skills and Traits” but I’m hoping that since the exercises so far have been so helpful, that these won’t be as difficult as I remember them being in the old edition.

“Hard skills are things you’ve learned or been trained in; soft skills are personality traits or characteristics.” “Transferable skills” are hard or soft skills that can be applied in a number of settings.”

The assignment is to write 7 stories from your life. Each story should have: “your goal…, some kind of hurdle, obstacle, or constraint you faced…, and a description of what you did, step-by-step to ultimately achieve your goal”. “Don’t pick a story where you achieved something big, like “how I got my college degree over a period of ten years”. At least to begin with, write a story about some brief episode or task you accomplished, in which you also had fun!”

Surprised face emoji…. “Fun”? Not the prompt I was expecting but I can guess the method to their madness – a big story is something that doesn’t really showcase who you are as an individual as much maybe.

I’ll just start with the first story that immediately came to mind:

There was a bratty little boy that my neighborhood friends hated playing with. They told me that the reason they hated him was because he had to have his way with everything and if they didn’t agree, he would tell on them and complain to his dad. Although I didn’t really witness his behavior myself, I trusted my friends who told this to me and I didn’t play with him much either.

One day, his dad came to complain to my parents about how the kids wouldn’t treat his son right or play with him correctly. I only had a child’s level of language comprehension, so I couldn’t really understand what he was saying other than the occasional references to his son and us, but I got the gist of what he was saying.

My parents just awkwardly stood there because they didn’t know how to respond and so I was pissed off and piped up, “Well, maybe you should just buy him a guard dog”. This was because his dad was acting like my parents should be protecting him from our “bullying” every second of the day.

The dad pointed to me and in broken English said something like “You shut up!” Obviously, a really mature and intelligent dad. Of course, then my parents had to say something – hopefully in my defense but maybe not – and the dad just spun around, since he’d clearly acted stupidly, and flew off in a fury.

My parents closed the door and then leaned against it laughing heartily. They patted me on the head and I don’t remember what they said, but I felt like I got rewarded for telling an adult off, which made me feel oddly proud.

I think that incident sticks out in my head because that was the first time I felt like I spoke like an adult even though I was a child. I resolved an adult problem for my parents and I spoke up for myself to solve a problem for me as well, since an adult was wrongly criticizing me and maligning my character. I resolved a somewhat sticky and completely ridiculous situation, with a combination of honesty, intellect, insight, and an appropriate level of sarcasm about the stupidity of what was being requested. I guess the fun was in speaking as an adult, amusing my parents and getting rewarded for standing up for myself lol.

Okay, to be continued. I’ve spent an hour so far so I’ll continue the exercise later.