is college teaching us anything?

A little over a year ago I graduated from college after 4 years. Soon after I began my life in the work force and here i am today. Right from the start I felt lost. I felt like i was in a completely different world, unable to understand what was going on around me. I am in what is known as the "real world," quite different from what college is. The lessons that i learned in college could not always be put to use in the real world. College did not prepare me on how to deal with dsr's and customers. It did not prepare me on how to deal with working towards a sales goal one month and a completely different one the next. It did not prepare me to know what to do when a customer is out of a product that is no longer in stock and needs to get some now. I have felt so many times over the past year, that college has simply not prepared me for many of the situations and challenges that i have been faced with this last year. I expected all of this. I expected that the lessons we learn in the classroom are going to be somewhat different when being applied to "real life" situations.

Little did i know, however that even the lessons that i learned in school can be somewhat outdated and incorrect. This entire week i have been taking part in a customer oriented selling workshop seminar. It is to "refresh" the minds of the older sales rep as well as teach the new sales reps the ways of selling. I was excited about the class because you can always learn something new, and especially being in a class with others who have had much more experience than me. Now, Kraft has not done the best job at offering any type of formal training, so when the opportunity arose, i jumped on it. I was also interested, because since i did just come from college and have taken similar classes in college i felt prepared. I was used to the classroom and homework and exams so I thought this class would be a great refresher for me while gaining knowledge from the other experienced sales people at Kraft. Only a few days into the class and I am utterly shocked at what i have learned. I have learned more in the past few days that i did an entire semester at my sales class in college. Not only that but the techniques that I have been learning in this class are completely negating the lessons and techniques that I originally learned in my college class. Apparently, the lessons that I was learning in college were 'outdated' and more of the old school style of sales. Times have changed, the customer has changed, and therefore our sales skills must changed. This would be fine if I attended college 10 years ago, but I'm talking 1 year since i took this class, it shouldn't be this outdated. I thought that coming right out of college and into the job that I have would give me somewhat of an advantage because I just left school and learned these lessons and skills and have fresh ideas. Apparently, what I learned in school were not "fresh" ideas, but old ones that are outdated and not practical anymore. This slightly disturbs me because, why go to school if everything you learned there, you are simply going to be told that you learned the wrong way of doing things. The one class that should help me the most in my line of work has actually hurt me, since it taught me the wrong skills.

What are students learning in college today? I'm beginning to question if I learned anything useful that can be applied to the real world. I'm beginning to question if I learned anything at all. I'm beginning to wonder why so much money was spent on an education that is teaching me the wrong skills. So what is the answer to all of this? I'm not sure, but here is my guess. College cannot fully prepare us for what we are going to be doing with our lives after. It cannot predict what type of job we will be in and what type of situations we will be faced with. College can only give you the platform of which to learn by. It can only give you the basic fundamentals to your degree of study. College can give you a glimpse into what the "real world" might be like, but it cannot tell you exactly what it will be like. That is one of the biggest lessons I have learned this past year. I have to take the skills that I learned in college and be able to use them with the new skills that I am learning today.

I just spent three whole days in an intense workshop concentrating on Customer Oriented Selling. This class was there to give you the skills to use when going out into the "real world situations." Like college, it cannot give you exactly what is going to happen, it can only give you the skills to know how to handle different situations. The class was intense and definitely hard at times. We learned the material and then did role playing with video cameras and then discussed what was done right, what was done wrong, and what can be done to improve yourself. At the end of this course, however there was no final exam like in college. That is because the final exam is the actual work. Its going out and making the sales call and hopefully being successful in the process. Its taking the skills that were just learned and applying them to real life situations. The instructor was amazing. I had never had a better teacher in my entire life. He helped me immensely. He taught me the skills that I need to learn and pointed out the skills that I have to improve at (one being listening, I did everything that I was supposed to, by the book- asking questions, but he told me that I was not listening to my customer. I was simply moving on to the next question on my list) That is something that I am going to be working on over the next few weeks active listening. At the end of the course he asked for everyones opinion. And the general consensus was that it was hard, painful and he replied- Thats good because learning is painful. Learning is through experience and if the experience is always easy, then what exactly are you learning? Overall I am happy that I took part in this workshop. I look forward to the many more Kraft training sessions that go on especially with this teacher. I felt that he was able to understand not only my needs but everyones needs. He was able to understand what everyone needed to learn and how they needed to learn. That is one of the many mistakes that teachers make, they have their way of teaching and that is it. They don't understand that each student learns in a different way and that you have to be flexible to adapt to their learning technique.