What does six years of experience give you?
For me it gives a very thorough view of how everything should be managed from start to finish, if there's an error somewhere I'll try to fix the problem and looking for ways that it will not happen anymore, in a short form I'd do a CAPA on it. That habit of doing root cause analysis of every problem and trying to understand what causes the problem, looking for corrective and preventive actions has been ingrained to me so much, that I had a hard time to believe that there are somebody out there who didn't understand that this is how you should live your life, by moving forward, making mistakes, correcting it and moving forward again, often this view would leads up to countless arguments where I try to explain the necessity of having that kind of viewpoint.
That's one.
Another skills that I acquired is to read doctor's handwriting, and you all probably know how doctor's handwriting would look like don't you? Speaking of writing, I also acquired the skills of writing concise report in a non-prosaic ways, as simple as possible so that I could explain to diverse kind of people whatever shit that I have encountered, this creates trouble especially when I am writing a post like this where would need all the vocabularies that existed would still engage the readers (if there's one). This is probably the one skill that I need to learn more, how to engage your reader and becoming more interesting writer.
What else? Six years of experience also gives me a knowledge of how a system works, however in this ever changing world that doesn't mean a single thing, a change in the system could happen in an instant and all I can do is just to follow it and try to figure out what will work and what doesn't. It also give me a great insight on how to deal with various people and bureaucrats, across culture and places, it gives me some understanding on why I should take two steps back in order to move three steps forward and finally it gives me that sense, that particular sense that allows me to understand the situation by analysing people's behaviour, their tone, expression, choice of words.
The six years gives me the knowledge that I need to navigate in the world, however, it doesn't give me the direction of where I want to go.
I recall I was getting tired on my fourth leading to fifth year (or was it fifth leading to sixth?) headhunters would call me and asking whether I was interested in working in so and so in the same position that I had that day, I remember telling them as well that I was in the verge of losing my interest, I didn't interested in doing the same and was keen on trying on a different industry. There are plenty of experience that I gained outside of my jobs description and I was optimistic that with enough training I'll be able to catch up, learn and understand about jobs in different industry works. None come back to me.
Funny thing about how the universe works though, you don't know whether when is the right time to do anything. You could strike at a very precise time that you have measured and still you end up failing or you could only wait and suddenly it'll come to you. For me it was the case of the latter, it's not that I wasn't looking for any opportunity, but like I said none seems to have worked out, until some part time gig would lead to job applications and then two interviews and one written test later here I am worlds apart from what I used to do for a living, with me and other colleagues still scratching our head coming with the questions what the hell does a medical bioscientist graduates doing in communications?
Six years of experience gives me the understanding to navigate life, outside of that I tried to nurture my own interests in which I believe everybody should be doing. I pursue a creative endeavour, however small it is, I try to meet up with new people and it's a bonus if I could do it in a communal activity and last but not least I try to keep an open mind, always learning and always try to improve. I am pretty lucky that I could try and work outside of the industry that I have been involved for the past six years, however what I have learned is not only a means to get that, but ones that I need to understand life.
Here's to another years and years ahead.