Saturday, February 11, 2012

The ICT course



Because I wanted so much to learn something fresh and different from my routine, I enrolled for a free course at AMC Business School last week. Excitedly I responded 'yes' to the sms when it was sent to have the enrolment confirmed. Wednesday 6-9.45pm and Thursday 6-9.45pm. "Just nice", I thought. On the first course day, I verbalized a long list of instructions to the kids, making sure that they'd behave while I was gone. Then off I went to the course at 5pm, on the dot.

The lady at the counter was very helpful, but seemed puzzled when I gave her my name. "Yes, I did register for MS Excel", I insisted. She politely asked me to recheck my inbox, just to make sure. "Oh no, it is MS Access!" I heard myself exclaimed. The lady smiled and cheerfully suggested that I gave it a go. Thinking that I have come all the way to the place, fighting a heavy jam when it was actually only about 5km from my office, I decided to heed her advice.

At 5.45pm, I was comfortably seated at lab 4, waiting for the instructor to come. 6.50pm and I was still on my own. Finally, realizing that I was being unusually early, I went downstairs for a drink. When I came back at 6.05pm, the instructor was waiting for the software to download on each PC, and there were about 4 students waiting.

At 7pm, the software was still downloading. By then there were 12 students waiting. We were given meal coupons and half an hour to have our dinner. Thankfully when we came back the PCs were ready to go! 2 hours on the first day was spent on waiting...but at least the remaining session was spent wisely on the nuts and bolts of MS Access.

It might have been too basic. Something I could have done with a little bit of exploring on my own laptop, but on the second day I realized it wasn't wasted at all. It was good to have an expert explained things effortlessly, to discover functions that on my own, I'd have found confusing. Mission accomplished...I did something simple yet refreshing, and at the end of the day, I was rewarded with a certificate to show off!

2 comments:

Borneo rain on February 19, 2012 at 7:39 AM said...

Hehe, what a nice experience! You and I must be on the same page here. Recently, I went to take a 'how-to' course, too, i.e., on data analysis. It was as if the trainer was this familiar person who had spent some time with me earlier on the couch chit-chatting about how to analyse data. It was so refreshing! If anything, I left the workshop feeling very positive, and not as clueless as I initially thought! Love these seminars/workshops!

Gaby on February 28, 2012 at 7:53 AM said...

yeah, i got 2 certificates last week for Photoshop 1&2...=D

 

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