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CHAPTER 6
I heard in a film. Now we all know that Superman was a very big deal on earth because he had amazing powers: superhuman strength, he could fly, x-ray vi- sion, and so on. But if he had returned to his home planet, he wouldn’t be any- thing special because everyone else would be just like him. It’s only when he goes to another planet, Earth, that he stands out because his strengths relative to everyone else are extraordinary.
That’s the key point. When I was one of several technical writers in a group, I was nothing special, because at least some of the writers were better than me. But when I worked as an administrative assistant or project coordinator, I was special because of my technical writing skills. Most admin assistants have not been tech writers; because I had been, that was my “superpower”.
As I began working as an administrative assistant, I realized it was very intri- cate and varied work. I was doing customer service, documentation devel- opment, file management and project management. I eventually got a job at a manufacturing company, working as a receptionist, but organizing all of the training, documentation, projects, a newsletter and various bookkeeping and invoicing tasks. I loved the variety of it and the fact that I was very good at it. However, the company was very poorly run, was hit by a major cyber-attack and eventually went bankrupt.
This led to really to my main job at a large half-a-billion-dollar non-profit or- ganization. Although the title was Administrative Assistant, it was more like a project coordinator. I was managing a multi-million dollar building campaign. Again, I was doing database work, including Salesforce, content management, and document management. I was discovering major errors and training people on how to use the software. I enjoyed the work, and it was very mean- ingful. I also like the fact that I was constantly using my tech writing skills.
Eventually, though, I was laid off. However, I soon got a job through a recruiter as a project coordinator at a small manufacturing company in Toronto. I worked there for a couple of years, and it was really amazing work. Again, it was a very intricate job, with lots of database work, documentation, training, manipulating data, working with invoices, importing and exporting, and
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