The Skills I Learned That Mattered More Than Any Job Title

Cooking, CPR, communication, and financial literacy didn’t just prepare me for work, they prepared me for life.

Photo by Martin Splitt on Unsplash

When I was a kid, my experience of life was best summed up by someone standing on an Indian railway platform. In and out of the platform came the trains, while people rushed and jostled, bags strapped to their shoulders and boxes balanced on their heads, as the vendors shouted about chai and samosas.

In the midst of this cacophony, there I was, trying not to get knocked over, when adulthood arrived.

I figured if I just kept swimming, everything would fall into place. I told myself the degree, the job, and the paycheck would be everything else.

Until the small humiliations came.

Like the day back in college when I burnt the rice so badly that the smell lingered in the kitchen for days. Or like the one time when I was called into my boss’s office in the US and he wanted to know why I was so quiet in meetings, while a tidal wave of thoughts was bursting through my brain, and I had no idea how to share any of them.

Each of those occasions was equally painful.