(Translation: I built a landing page and felt like a tech wizard.)
When I was in high school in the late 70’s and early 80’s (my god that’s so long ago!), I took a “Computer Programming” class. We learned to code in COBOL, BASIC, and FORTRAN. My public school didn’t even have its own mainframe — there was only one for all of Baltimore County.
Once a month, our class boarded the big orange school bus to Loch Raven High School, toting our punch card decks with our programs. We handed them to some mysterious tech who then ran them. You were rewarded with a stack of pin-fed printouts replete with your coding errors.
Abashedly taking your failure back to school, trying to find what exact card contains your error (was it # 95 or #156?), fixing it, rinsing and repeating the following month, I admit it was a somewhat unsatisfying endeavor.
In college as an Economics major, math ruled the day. No PCs yet. Just scientific calculators and brainpower. By grad school, computer labs were finally appearing. I was less impressed with equation-solving capabilities and more amazed that I could edit a paper without retyping the entire thing.
Fast forward to the “OK Boomer” era.
Born in the final year of the boomer generation, I uncomfortably straddle two competing mindsets:
“This newfangled thing is a flash in the pan”
and
“Hm, I should probably figure this out.”
Digital natives cannot fully grasp a world without unlimited computing power in your pocket. It’s like learning a language from birth versus moving to a new country as an adult and stumbling through pronunciation.
After selling my business, I finally felt safe, admitting I was never fully comfortable in the technical world. “Fake it till you make it” only carries you so far until reality sets in and you can’t actually make pretend you know how to handle SEO for your company’s website.
And then reality comes and slaps you in the face. “We’re not quite done with you yet, Old Timer,” it gleefully mocks.
While preparing for presentations at a national trade show, I was informed — in no uncertain terms — that they would not be printing my handouts.
No amount of logic, cajoling or convincing could sway these folks.
“Just create a landing page on your website with a PDF of your handouts and project a QR code so attendees can download them.”
Just.
This throwaway sentence was the equivalent of a heart surgeon telling me, “Oh, just cut there, insert the stent, and close up. Easy peasy.”
My brain screamed “Oh, absolutely not!”
My pride was singing a different tune.
Am I going to reply, “WTF are you talking about?”
Or am I going to figure this thing out?
Pride wins.
I won’t insult Dexter, my ChatGPT sidekick, by pretending I heroically wrestled this beast to the ground on my own.
Let’s be honest.
He did the heavy lifting.
He broke things into steps. He explained them like I was five. He calmly redirected me when I veered off course.
And I followed along.
Mostly.
And I ended up doing the seemingly impossible– created a landing page on my website with a PDF of my handouts and a QR code so attendees can download them.
Nothing exploded.
No servers were harmed.
The internet remains intact.
But here’s what surprised me.
It wasn’t the landing page.
It wasn’t the QR code.
It was the feeling.
That quiet, deeply satisfying realization that my brain still stretches. That I can still be a beginner. That I can still feel slightly panicked… and do it anyway.
Maybe “old dogs can’t learn new tricks” isn’t about age.
Maybe it’s about willingness.
And maybe the real trick wasn’t building the landing page.
Maybe it was refusing to decide I’m done learning, solidifying my belief that I can learn almost anything, in spite of being an aging canine stakeholder.
