I had just walked out of a 2 year role as General Manager of a $24M a year company. It wasn’t the path I wanted to follow, but it was the only option for me. A few days before, I was asked if I would be interested in attending an introductory seminar for a course in Logistics. “It is only a couple of weeks long,” I was told.
Walking into the room, there were tables set apart with only one chair. We were in the midst of COVID social distancing. The professor explained that this would be a virtual course with occasional face to face meetings on Saturdays. “Two weeks,” I thought to myself.
“How long will this class take?” “It will be 3 nights a week. Four hours each night and every other Saturday for 4 hours.” “OK, but how many weeks,” I asked. “11 weeks, the class is designed to help you pass the CLTD exam,” the professor responded.
11 weeks, times 12 hours a week with alternating Saturdays equals 156 hours of “face” time plus all the prep work which included reading hundreds of pages of text and Case Studies and generating Flash Cards. In the end, over 300 hours of prep, and that was before really studying.
You might think, “I don’t have time for this!” But, in my case, I had time. I was between “things” and with little to take up my time during the day than job hunting. Job hunting is about networking and reaching out to people. Yes, you apply to jobs on-line, but rarely will you get a response unless you find an e-mail address of someone at the Company, and you start reaching out. I will write about that experience another time, but let’s just say that after 6 to 8 hours a day of “hunting” for a job, having 4 hours of class was a good thing for me.
Still, that is a lot of work to get a certificate in a field where I have little to no experience. Sure, I could have said, “no.” “But wait, the class is free,” I could hear the college administrator say. “We have a grant and would normally cost you a few thousand dollars, including the exam fee, will be covered by the grant.”
Wow, that is a great deal, so what about this test? “It is 150 questions, closed book, and you have 3 and a half hours to complete it,” the professor said. He punctuated all of that with a “and it will be difficult for you to finish!”
Great way to start a class! You are going to work your butt off to prepare for a test that is hard to complete in over 3 hours! How does that even make sense? “How many people have this certificate?” I asked. “Less than 1,000 people in the world!” was the response.
“Bring it on!” was the thought in my head.
I won’t boar you with the details, the agony of being brain dead at 10 pm at night after a 4 hour lecture on the crazy world of Logistics! Burnout was a weekly thing, but it did not matter! Needed to be one of the first 1,000 people to get this certificate, so I did the work. I studied, I read the books I wrote the flash cards and took the online quizzes that had me saying, “What kind of question is that! There isn’t enough information to make sense of what is being asked. And the answer they say is the right one makes even less sense than the question.” Weeks went by like that and the closer the test date got, the less prepared I felt.
“I have been studying for months, it is just time to go ahead and take the test! If I don’t pass, at least I will have learned what is on the test and will have a better strategy for studying for the next test.” That is what I kept telling myself for a couple of weeks before the actual exam.
Walking into the testing center – just a quick side note, this was not an office building, it was a small second story office set up with computers and half walls, but that is story for another time – I resolved myself to just focus on each question and ignoring the clock. I was not going to think beyond the current question, I was not going to think about how many questions I needed to get right. I was just going to think about the question in front of me.
I logged into the test. I took the pre-test questions, the kind designed to teach you how to use the testing software. After 10 minutes of “appetizer,” I clicked on “begin” to start the test. The questions were relatively simple at first. “This is just a few simple ones at first to get your confident and then they will slam you,” I thought to myself. As I went through the test, I would flag some questions for review later.
I kept answering questions, flagging about half a dozen in total and then I looked up at the time and how many questions I had answered. In less than an hour I had answered 85 questions. The mathematics did not add up in my head, “How is this possible?” I could not let myself become distracted, I just had to focus on answering questions and after an hour and a half I was done with my first pass. 2 hours left, I went back and looked at the ones I flagged and took my time to study the questions and answer them.
“I can’t just keep reading questions, I know what I know and that is it. I am done with this thing.” That was my last thought before I hit submit. Then I got multiple questions about, “Are you sure you are done?” “YES, I am done!”
The software took a minute to process and then came back with, “Congratulations. It takes 300 points to pass, and you scored 312!” or words to that effect. I had passed! No drama! No crazy questions, just work! No failure, just work. Even if I did not pass, it was just work. I would do it again! And that is the answer to everything! It is just work! If you pass, then you move on to the next test. If you don’t pass, you learn, study, and try again.
Are you prepared? You can’t answer that question until you try and then wait for your results. So, what are you waiting for? Go study, prepare, and then take the test! What is the worse that could happen? You might learn something!
One final thought….
A week before the exam, I was given an offer to join a medium sized Electronics Manufacturer. The role was not one I had planned on, but the company and the people were good, and culture is far more important than role in most cases. I accepted the offer and started the Monday before the exam. Every day I use what I learned in the exam prep class at the company. I did not know it at the time of the interview or when considering the offer, but the weeks of study were not there to prep me for the exam. They were there to prepare me for the role I was taking on!
Life offers you opportunities all the time. We just become blind to them because they don’t match the label or wrapper that we think opportunity comes in and we are often wrong. Take the chance, it may pay off far better than you could ever imagine!
Gramatges Consulting 