A few years back I was asked in a interview something along the lines of “how comfortable are you learning new software?” I calmly and with as much attitude as was acceptable, this was a job interview, said “I can learn any software.” Well, those words came back to haunt me recently.

For the last couple of years my career has been focused on developing online learning materials. You know those online classes, we all have to take on safety in the work place or defensive driving.  I build these materials using a number of different tools, that then output the materials into online learning compliant Flash files. So for the last two years I have been asking my manager if I could take a Flash class. This year I finally got my wish.

I signed up for the online Flash course offered through Adobe. I did the first part of the course with no problems. Thinking in frames instead of time or space was a change, but I got it. Then I started the second part FlashScript…..Suddenly the class was talking about classes and objects and functions, Oh My! I don’t have any experience in programming. The closest I’ve gotten to coding was HTML web pages.

I’ve been able to complete the class, but I will never again say I can learn any software.