At an early age, I learned from the example of my parents that if you wanted to ‘get ahead in life’, you had to work hard for it. My mother always used to say ‘knowledge is power’. At the same time, in the 1950s people often said ‘if you are born a penny, you will never be a quarter’. This meant that if you came from a ‘disadvantaged background’, your life would always be played out at that level and it would be almost impossible to succeed. My parents tried to achieve the opposite so that my brother and I would have better opportunities.
How did I do it?
I also started reading a lot, just like my mother. I got book reviews from the newspaper and borrowed books from the library in our village. At that time, there was no internet and the library in the village was not bigger than a living room. There was not much choice. Later, when I was 16 and working as a typist for a sales organization, I started my first (written) evening study. I have actually never stopped taking courses, training, workshops for the jobs I held and I have continued until I was 64. By studying so much, I created more opportunities and therefore got better jobs and a higher salary.
Goals
I therefore set goals for myself. Is it wrong to set goals for yourself? Is that ambitious and is ambition sometimes wrong? For a while, there was a lot of attention in the Netherlands to ‘lifelong learning’ with which one hoped to keep as many people as possible broadly employable and not on the sidelines. This was a danger given all the developments that took place in the field of automation, robotics, the development of artificial intelligence, the internet. It was also important for me to keep my knowledge and skills up-to-date so that it remained attractive for an employer to keep me on.
Result
The result of all my efforts has been that I was able to work 44 years with pleasure, that my life was never boring and that there was always a new challenge waiting. Johanna
