Labor Day: 30 Career Accomplishments, Special Skills, & Interesting Job Facts

According to Wikipedia, "Labor Day in the United States is...a celebration of the American labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of their country." 

It is a day to honor YOU, the hard American worker. A day to be proud of your positive labors, no matter how diminutive.

In representation of the 30 days in the month of September:

30 Career Accomplishments, Special Skills, and Interesting Job Facts of Mine

1.    I currently work as a digital artist in photo restoration and retouching.

2.    I have digitally restored hundreds of photographs and edited hundreds of thousands of images over the years.
3.    I have scanned close to one million, if not more, pictures and imaged tens of thousands of slides and negatives.

4.    My count for pictures I have printed in the photo lab over the last three years is well into the hundred thousands.
5.    I have burned more CDS and DVDs in 6½ years than most people will in a lifetime.
6.    Half of my day is spent working in Photoshop, either at work or home.
7.    I know way more about ratios and pixels in regards to printing and cropping than not just any normal person, but also the average photographer.
8.    I play audio cassette tapes, records, and reel-to-reel audio tapes on a regular basis.
9.    I handle VHS and other analog tapes almost daily, as well as movie reels.
10.    I have an eye for color in correcting photos and for choosing mat colors that correlate with the printed image.

11.    I love doing any task in the photo lab or darkroom since I started my photography interest years ago with film, and it makes me feel like I have come full circle. I appreciate handling and learning about all the vintage photographic mediums.
12.    I know a lot about photography (manual settings, composition) and fixing basic issues with most cameras.
13.    I studied Multimedia for my undergraduate degree - and use all of the skills I learned daily at both work and for personal projects.
14.    I majored in multimedia because I couldn't decide which media I liked best to study. Thus, I have studied digital photography, graphic design, image editing, print design, television, video editing, Web design, Web coding, radio, Flash animation, computer programming, etc. -- and enjoyed learning about them all!
15.    I completed my Associates in Arts degree at a community college before transferring for my Bachelor's.
16.    I received the Senior Award for Multimedia because of having the highest GPA in my program, as well as the College of Art & Sciences Award for High Honors. I made Dean's List every semester I was enrolled at both colleges.
17.    Now, I am finishing up a Certificate in Digital Photography.
18.    I am very multimedia-minded and a digital problem solver. There has yet to be any computer program on the job (or off!) that I can't master, from design to printing and office to financial.

19.    I also work on the technical side of computers, such as networking, troubleshooting software, and even swapping out hard drives and graphics cards.
20.    I know basic XHTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript; two companies I built Websites for in the past eventually led to an onsite job.
21.    My exceptional math ability (geometry, ratios, algebra) and proficient writing talent (spelling, grammar, vocabulary) have been useful in all jobs I have ever had, and my graphic art skills and amazing memory have come in handy at times, too!  ;-)
22.    Besides image editing, I am also trained in graphic design and only needed one more class to declare it as my minor but didn't know enough about the college process to figure that out in time. :-\
23.    On personality-career tests, I always scored highest in the art and social categories, so it makes sense the other field I seriously considered was social work.  Very interesting to me, I took A LOT of psychology classes in college and probably could have had that as a minor also.
24.    I got my required college internship based on my knowledge of Flash animation at the time. My adviser said I could work for Pixar...(like that happened! LOL)
25.    I may be mostly artsy now but have done a lot of office work, including bookkeeping, bill paying, and account handling in QuickBooks -- I may be highly creative but don't let it fool you, I have the brain and organizational skills for financial duties, too! ;-)

26.    A couple years after graduating, I thought of focusing in Web design and then even computer programming, and I took some CIS night classes. I was going to test for the CIW Associate certificate and build off that, but then I got my current job as a second job on my day off, life got busy, and I eventually returned to my photographic side (although I was doing more video work at the time I started here).

27.    With much encouragement from my boss and a co-worker at the time to promote my talents, I made up business cards in 2007. Things I have done freelance since then include: photo restoration/retouching, photo collages, video editing, video photo montages, logo design, website construction, and now, some portrait and event photography. ☺

28.    I feel a sense of completion when I personally do an entire job from start to finish, such as tile scanning a large photograph, restoring it in Photoshop, printing the fixed version, cutting a correlating mat, and framing it.  I also love to be able to do projects and designs all from scratch, using only photos I took, graphics I drew freehand, and even Website code I wrote. It is fulfilling for me to be able to say artwork is 100% mine with no clip-art, not even background textures. I love knowing I am an original! ;-D
29.    Thus, I have never claimed another employee's work as my own without giving credit where due, and I don't think I have ever pushed blame towards a co-worker at any job for a mistake I knew I made. I have always been confident enough with my own skills and try to do a good enough job on whatever the task, so that I am proud to stand up for my individual work and, thus, have no need to be praised for a job somebody else did. I want my own work to carry me; I don't require false representation to get ahead!
30.    I rarely have one job title to describe all I do in a position; I am rarely ever hired for one specific duty. I usually have the official job title created long after starting, it seems. For one position, I actually had to write up my own job duties to have on file! That was a new one!  LOL

Wow, that was fun, I thought of 30 achievements! And, I got long winded towards the end (imagine that!), sorry...OK, now, celebrate you! :-)