I’m going to give the ways that I’ve dealt with this issue, but the question is somewhat genuine. I always struggle with describing my experience (or, really, my working knowledge) when it comes to the creative and technical side of marketing because so much of it comes from things I taught myself either because they were necessary for my writing or just because I thought it was interesting and fun.

Like many now 30-something writers, I spent copious amounts of time on online writing communities. I started out on Quizilla (yes, it was as cringey as it looks in the old screen cap I found on Reddit), I was a part of the mass exodus to Mibba, I spent many a “two weeks” waiting for New Mibba.

And like so many, reading the work of others very quickly turned into sharing my own work, turned into teaching myself Photoshop so I could make my own banners, turn into teaching myself code so I could make my own and others’ webpages (Mibba literally just gave every user an open HTML box for a profile page and said “Have fun!”), turned into Beta reading for newer authors and giving them feedback. During my time in high school I wrote somewhere around 20 manuscripts. One X-Men fanfic that I wrote (I know, I know, I was an edgy teen) I wrote in less than 24 hours after seeing one of the new movies. It was like 40 chapters long!

My point is a lot of what I did as a teenager, just because I could and because I had unfettered access to the internet, is relevant to what I do now. And even if it isn’t, the very fact that I taught myself to read and write code just by taking templates, changing things, and seeing what happens, says a lot about my ability to pick up new skills or technologies and get a working knowledge of them in little to no time.

The challenge comes in trying to communicate this experience in any significant way. Generally, I stick to just describing it in my Cover Letter when applying for jobs. Still, I’ve gotten the impression that most hiring teams don’t read those anyway, and it doesn’t help describe my experience outside of job applications. It often feels like coworkers underestimate my breadth of knowledge.

But when it comes to describing that knowledge to people in everyday life—outside of the people who were there for the craziness of writing communities in the early-00s (when you know, you know)—as soon as I start talking about things I did in high school (or even *gasp!* middle school) are immediately written off. It’s like they hear “high school” or “teenager” and think, “Well, nothing I did in high school applies to my job today, so this is useless.”

So I’m curious how others out there handle this. Both with applying for new jobs and just in general work interactions. I assume when it comes to creatively inclined careers, I’m not the only one with this problem.