A New Reality by: Maria McGlone
On March 1st 2020, your life changed forever. Your classroom became your bedroom, your office
became the kitchen table, and social events became screen time, plagued with “oops I forgot to unmute” moments and “sorry- you froze for a sec” glitches.
Once you learned how to use Zoom and the stress of the American toilet paper shortage of 2020 passed, reality sunk in. Your mind was riddled with worries that no longer include stockpiling paper goods. Your worries were much more serious: Will my parents be okay? Will I be okay? What about my immunocompromised friend? How can I find the motivation to get out of bed in the morning?
A few more months passed and you were surprised to find that your social skills had taken such a significant hit. For me this was the most intense result of quarantine. When the pandemic hit I was 18 and in my Freshman year of college. As I was finally settling into life over 2000 miles away from where I grew up, I was sent back home and into lockdown. By the time I stopped worrying that I would never get to go to the Harry Styles concert that my friends and I had tickets to, I realized that the performances of sexy British musicians were the least of my concerns. I went three months without seeing or speaking to a single friend in person. Nearly two and a half years and one Harry Styles concert later, my life remains forever changed by the global pandemic.
I can never get back the year and a half of online school and on-and-off quarantine that kept me from valuable human interactions, stunting my emotional intelligence and people skills. What I can do, however, is supplement the experiences I missed out on with efforts towards intentional self development.
Working with Success Training Institute has given me the opportunity to improve my soft skills, a genre of personal and workplace skills that many members of the workforce lack. According to Suman Agarwal, an award-winning image management professional, soft skills improve decision-making, problem-solving, customer service, sales, employee retention, and contribute to a healthy work environment (https://futureofsourcing.com/7-reasons-soft-skills-are-important-in-the-workplace ).
SimplySuccess.com encourages work-life balance and provides video based curriculum in the form of 8 minute or less videos. Each training session ends with a quiz, allowing users to gauge their learning. With
the completion of each training, the user is awarded a certificate, building their confidence and giving them a sense of satisfaction and motivation, emotions that seem to be in short supply lately. These soft skills certifications also look great on your resume *wink wink*.
Whether you’re looking to boost your interview skills, workplace competencies, college career readiness, or simply improve your ability to set goals and follow through with them, soft-skills are vital.
Success Training Institute has allowed me to fill in the gaps in my emotional deficiencies and learn to cope with the stresses and uncertainties of daily life in 2022.