Communicative competence
These terrible words indicate, according to the psychological dictionary, "the ability to establish and maintain the necessary contacts with other people. For effective communication is typical: to achieve mutual understanding of partners, a better understanding of the situation and the subject of communication (greater certainty in understanding the situation contributes to solving problems, ensures the achievement of goals with optimal use of resources). At school this is not taught: the main activity of teenagers is communication, then the other positions, professional, gradually come to the forefront. And communication becomes much more structured and meaningful: we realize that we no longer need to like everyone and everyone, we find our own style, we determine who we really want to be friends with, and with whom it is sufficient to maintain formal relations.
If in an adult life you do not tolerate criticism, from whom it comes, you can hardly turn first to a stranger, unable to get rid of unnecessary contacts and support the necessary ones, do not know how to negotiate - most likely, with communicative competence you do not have has developed. "It is treated" with special training and courses.
Systematic thinking
At school, I did not manage to learn these endless times of English verbs for a long time - until the teacher drew a sign on the board in which they were all, and there were not so many of them. At the university, I could not finish reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" until I thought of drawing a genealogical tree of the Buendia family - and after that no confusion in the names prevented me from enjoying the text.
Education gives us the opportunity to comprehend the world as a system of interrelations, in which each action has its consequences - so the dominoes fall on each other. In general, any science can not be understood until the end, if you do not understand how it works and how it works - just as a system. If you observe the work of the famous book investigators - Holmes or Poirot - it is noticeable that they just brought to perfection the ability to understand the relationship between things, people and actions.
Of course, the work of a detective or, for example, a financial analyst - this is aerobatics, which not everyone can. But if you and to this day perceive not only the whole world, but your sphere of activity as a chaos of facts and hypotheses, and memory leads you because you know only one method of remembering-cramming, it means that the system thinking did not work out . This is corrected either by an additional education with good teachers, or thoughtful and purposeful self-education.
Prioritization
In the West, this skill is simpler - it is decided to choose courses and seminars at the request of the student. We inherited from the Soviet education system sometimes gets a huge number of items that are not clear to anyone and why are needed, and time and resources for them to spend it is necessary. To understand what is necessary for you and whether the red diploma of efforts applied to mastering and passing non-core or simply uninteresting disciplines costs is a task that not all yesterday's schoolchildren, who are adjusted to get good grades for the sake of grades themselves, manage. But, as a rule, we are approaching the decision to receive a second higher education already with a cold head, realizing that we want to take this and why. But what if five years of life have already been wasted?
If you have not learned how to understand your needs and understand which of them are most important to you, and what you need most, and what you can refuse (this applies to employment and to people), and often allow others to solve these questions for themselves - it means it's time to sort out the priorities. To begin with, you just need to take a piece of paper and describe on it your desired future in five years, and then think about what you need to achieve this goal and how to achieve it. When there is a goal, priorities are placed very simply.
Time management
"Time Management", or time-management, is what practically all students lack. Night vigils on the eve of the exam or graduation, heroic jerks for mastering the program of the semester for a day without food, but with five liters of coffee (and you mixed instant coffee with Pepsi-Cola in order not to fall asleep the night before the exam?) - of course, romantic, but it shows only that you could not properly manage the time and the entire semester was not learning the acquired professional knowledge and skills, but something not related to learning, whether it was walking under the moon, phone chatter with a girlfriend Second, a party with fellow students, or attempts to solve the eternal question: "Why does not he call ?!" Of course, without any prior skill of time management will not work - it can not be understood without prioritizing what is worth spending precious time.
The art of succeeding, which is so lacking to us, who submits an article or an annual report five minutes before the end of deadline, is not at all inherited from any particular gene-it can be learned. Books are published (for example, "Time Drive: How to Manage to Live and Work" by Gleb Arkhangelsky) and special courses and trainings are organized, often at the expense of the companies in which we have to work. Somehow it's illogical that employers are concerned about our time more than ourselves, do not you think?
Search skills
My diploma of a philologist does not mean at all that I know where to put this or that comma, but I know which dictionaries and reference books can clarify the rule. It is not necessary to keep absolutely all the information about your profession in your head - it is enough to understand where you can find them and what sources of information you should trust. Unfortunately, not in every university this is taught - let's say, about such a valuable source of scientific information, as abstract journals, I was surprised to learn only at the final direct preparation for the defense of the diploma. The ability to search and find provides an excellent foundation for self-education: you can not read all the necessary books in the university (and sometimes it's physically impossible), but you can return to the program and fill in the "holes" and expand certain areas of your knowledge. And in order to successfully exist in the labor market and move up the career ladder, you need to be aware of the latest trends in your field of activity.
Of course, search engines are our faithful helper (although you should also handle them), but it's better when you are looking not at random, but in proven sources. You can answer the question of a colleague or superiors: "I do not know this, but I know where it can be found"? If not - then we'll have to start at least from the same Internet to form a personal database of sources.
Discussion Skills
In medieval universities, they were very fond of such a form of organization of work as disputation. At the same time, the students who participated in them did not necessarily adhere to the point of view, but they learned to pick the right arguments and build their speech so that it was convincing. Hence, by the way, the expression "devil's advocate" appeared: the so-called opponent appointed to the speaker in order to defend the opposite opinion. In the modern world, many would be useful in the ability to build a logically consistent speech, express their opinion and argue it, and listen to the enemy to the end and always keep in mind that there is an opposite point of view. It is enough to go to any Internet forum to remember with a sigh the statement of Voltaire: "I do not share your convictions, but I will give my life for you to express them."
About the ability to be convincing wrote more Dale Carnegie, the same skill is devoted to a whole branch of psychology - neyrolinguistic programming, the popularity of rhetoric courses is growing every year. It remains to add to this skill the desire to listen to the interlocutor, even if you fundamentally disagree with him, do not go to the personalities in the heat of a dispute and do not assume that the purpose of the discussion is to win at any cost.
General knowledge
It is needed not only for game shows. Nowadays, when the World Wide Web allows you to find any information with one click of the mouse, it seems knowledge has become worthless. However, even if you do not play "What? Where? When? ", Erudition still adds points to you as an interesting interlocutor and competent specialist. A certain base of acquired professional knowledge and skills, together with the ability to critical thinking, allows us, in addition, not to succumb to mass panic and manipulation. Erudition is best felt in the company with the ability to search and find information. The main thing - do not forget the necessary information immediately after the page of the desired site is closed.
Fortunately, this skill is filled most easily - in the presence of a constant desire to learn and learn new, the interest in the world, which seems to have only children. Life is a damn interesting thing, and the more we learn, the more interesting it becomes. After all, the value of knowledge is not only in their practical application, but also in the joy of discovering a new one, without which the progress of mankind would be impossible. We flew into space only because for many centuries we dreamed to learn more about the stars.