Bore of a Training

Have you ever been to a training session and left feeling like you knew more before the actual training occurred? Have you ever sat in a training session, looked to your left and looked to your right, and wondered how in the world these people actually got hired at the same place you did? If not, maybe you are one of those people that get blogged about the next day. Or maybe I'm just a know-it-all snob. (Probably the latter is most accurate).

Yesterday, I had to attend a 3.5 hour training on an alumni/donor software that the University uses. I see this reoccurring theme in my life in which I attend a workshop, or training session, or class, and leave more frustrated than ever; it happened with the breastfeeding class and the hospital tour. Now that my work schedule is so extremely tight, I get frustrated at every wasted minute of my day. I had to wake up at 6:00am to get to work in time in order to walk cross campus to this training. Hence why I was so frustrated that we didn't even start getting into the real meat of the training until 45 minutes into the workshop. We had to go around the room and introduce ourselves and talk about how we will be using the program. I mean, really? I could care less how anyone else is using the program, I know how I needed to use it so let's get on with it. Then the "trainer" proceeded to give her background on how she believed her career in fund raising started when she was 6 years old when she trick-or-treated for UNICEF. I use the word trainer in quotations marks because supposedly she has been leading the training session for 2 years but couldn't get the projector to set up correctly (meaning she didn't know how to make the picture larger) or how to log in to the system. Her excuse was that she normally does the training sessions on Thursdays so the fact that it was a Tuesday was throwing her off.

As I sat there, passively taking in all the information, I started jotting down some things the trainer was saying. You know, real important stuff that I didn't want to forget. Here is my list of real things that are very important to know when using the program.

1. If you don't know what your campaign is, you will need to figure that out.
2. Scroll down until you find the "View Samples" link. DO NOT click on it.
3. Don't let indoor cats outside.
4. In order to open a constituent, please click on "Open a Constituent."

It definitely took 3.5 hours to get this information across!