Friday, April 27, 2012

Addiction or Expectation


[ “Pushed by technology and job evolution in the service economy, fewer American workers know what “quittin’ time” is.”  Diane Stafford, Kansas City Star,  April 2012 ]


This entire spring semester at NDSU I have been blogging on tech addiction.  As I was thinking about what to blog about this week, this thought crossed my mind: “I am in the technology field; staying on top of technology is what I do.”  As the United States becomes more and more technologically advanced, so will I.  With time, everything advances and our so-called “normal” lifestyles change.  And sometimes those lifestyle changes mean more work, and less play. 


I sat down and made a list of all of the technology I need to stay competitive in my job field:

Photo Credits
1.       A laptop – needed to sit down with clients to go over designs in remote locations, as well as just work from anywhere but home or my office. 

2.       A desktop computer – used as my powerhouse main station. This is where all of my designs get hammered out and ready to be taken off to meet clients, ready for production, or else stored on my 2TB hard drive. 

3.       An Ipad – used to show quick and impressive slideshows of completed work, for apps, and for taking pictures of future projects, adding dimensions, and uploading to my server back at the office.

4.       A smartphone – used to communicate with all of my clients through phone, text, email, and to access our company server.  

Some of you may think that I am crazy, and that these are not essential for being in the graphics/sales field.  You are right, they are not essential to do the job.  However, they are essential in today’s market if I want to stay on top of sales and beat out my competitors. If I let technology pass me by, I could be out of a job in the future. 


I started out as a graphic designer.  Now, I am a graphic designer, web designer, photographer, saleswoman, estimator, vinyl specialist, as well as a digital printing specialist, and am working on finishing up a public relations and advertising degree. 


Just because I do all of this doesn’t mean I like it.  There is no shut-off period.  I am getting phone calls, text messages, and emails, work related all hours of the day, 7 days a week.  Customers and employers won’t hesitate to call you while you are laying on the beach in Mexico.  Diane Stafford, of The Kansas City Star recently wrote “pushed by technology and job evolution in the service economy, fewer American workers know what “quittin’ time” is.” I don’t like to spend as much time as I do with technology, and would love to say “adios” some days, but I guess I will have to wait until I retire.

1 comment:

  1. Above picture shown that a person is surrounded with technology like laptop, smart phone, ipad etc. this technologies somehow good and some how bad. This is a discussion topic. Nice post. web directory

    ReplyDelete