Student Life | Learning to Fly by the Seat of Your Trousers

Flying by the seat of your trousers (or 'pants' if you are American) is a nifty little phrase I learnt that means to to do something difficult without the necessary experience or ability, or to decide a course of action as you go along, using your own initiative and perceptions rather than a pre-determined plan or mechanical aids.

Why does this matter? Because nowadays there is no room in companies for students or graduates that get by flying by the seat of their trousers. There is no room for error and even the easiest jobs are no longer "entry level". 

Unfortunately this means that for many skills that come naturally but are necessary in a work environment, e.g. communication, teamwork, you need to be able to prove you can do it before a recruiter lets you loose in their company. Woe betide the person who can't demonstrate the use of a transferable skill in a real life situation, preferably done under time pressure or financial constraints. But the point is, flying by the seat of your trousers, when phrased differently, is adaptability, is initiative, and is learning at speed, albeit with a larger risk of failure. However, our generation does have one thing on our side...

That's right. It's almost impossible to not know something with the ubiquity of immediate knowledge that is right at our fingertips. If a job description needs you to have a skill that you've never heard of; Google it. Read up on it. Research ways to learn the basics. Look for recent stories about it so you can engage with the topic if it comes up in an interview. Maybe even invest in a short course if you have the time. Make sure that you are not totally flying by the seat of your trousers, prepare yourself, and let Google give you, at the very least, a bit of padding lest your plane crash out of the sky.  

Let us learn from the very father of seat-trouser-flying himself, a man named Dougas Corrigan who flew from America to Ireland in the Summer of 1938. In those days, aircraft had limited navigation aids and relied mainly on the pilot's judgement. Originally he had submitted a plan to fly from California to Brooklyn, but he claimed his compass was broken, so instead he flew in the wrong direction, finally reaching Dublin 29 hours after taking off. The story of his trans-Atlantic flight was carried by many newspapers in America and the UK, including the following article in the Edwardsville Intelligencer, titled "Corrigan Flies By The Seat Of His Pants."

"Douglas Corrigan was described as an aviator 'who flies by the seat of his pants' today by a mechanic who helped him rejuvinate the plane which airport men have now nicknamed the 'Spirit of $69.90'. The old flying expression of 'flies by the seat of his trousers' was explained by Larry Conner, means going aloft without instruments, radio or other such luxuries." 19th July 1938

Corrigan was consequently nicknamed 'Wrong Way Corrigan' and starred as himself in the 1938 movie The Flying Irishman. A film and national fame aren't bad for a budding pilot flying across the world without full technical support or experience. So flying by the seat of your trousers needn't be a total wreck; you can learn from it and perhaps even make a success of it. But don't bank on it. If you haven't done your research, the chances are there is someone else going for the same opportunity as you who has. Too much reliance on trouser-power may mean you end up flying in the face of danger. 

Student Life | Easy Computing Skills

Computing and tings

Some people are terrified by computers and technology. But we shouldn't be - we are the information generation. It's weird going into an office and showing older people how to tweet and blog, they see you as some kind of Zuckerburg-Jesus. They key to impressing your bosses is knowing the down-low on the downloads, and you don't even need to know HTML (but it helps).

• Gimp - Calm down, dear, it's just a photoshop alternative. Adobe can cost a lot of money to a student, even though they have a lovely discount available. For the majority of us, its infinite tools are just not worth it. Gimp is simpler and FREE. So while employers might not recognise Gimp, you will learn those magical transferable skills, for if you take on a job involving adobe photoshop.
• Anki - free flashcard software. Whatever you're studying, I guarantee that Anki can help you revise it. You create your own flashcards, and it cleverly orders them to show you the ones you find more difficult more often. My law friends use it to revise case studies, I use it for Chinese characters. 
• Infographics - To choose a programme according to your own needs, read this handy guide to infographics. You can link up your Facebook account to Inforgram, so you don't even need to sign up. Being able to gather and represent information has never been easier.
• Dropbox - Far cheaper than an external hard drive, save your work in dropbox so if the worst should happen and your laptop dies/is stolen, it is already stored online for you. Also, it's really useful as a shared space to work on group documents, for example, editing magazines. 
• Learn to Code - There are free sites that can teach you the basics, like codeacademy  and coursera.
• Social Media - Chances are you are probably already familiar with most of the basics anyway. But start thinking about it from a business perspective, and try to be versed in all the main platforms that companies are trying to gain a presence in (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and perhaps Tumblr). Twitter is probably the most important of these, so learn how to use tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Tweetdeck. 
• Blogging - Not technically software, but still technological. If I can do it, so can you. Blogging isn't just for wannabe journalists; the ability to write, structure passages and present information in an interesting way is vital to any job. There are loads of free sites ready to host your blog - wordpress and blogspot are probably the most common.
• Mailchimp - Learn how to manage, write and format your own newsletters, try doing this for a student society you are part of, or show initiative and set one up for your local community!
• Websites - the step up from blogging. Wix, Godaddy and Squarespace take you through from choosing and purchasing a domain name to helping you with layouts.