I won’t lie. I dedicated my college career to philosophy. My communication degree came secondary, and only because my parents insisted I have a “real” major to fall back on. But that doesn’t mean I completely shirked my duties. I completed an internship. I ran the weekly student newspaper. I got involved.

Somehow, though, I found myself ill-equipped for life outside of college. When I graduated, I had no idea what opportunities my degree afforded me, let alone what I actually wanted to do with my life. As I’ve written before, I could read, write, speak, and think, but what in the would was I qualified to actually do? What did I have to offer at a company? Or anyone else for that matter. I felt a lot like this.

The technology you learn today will be irrelevant in 3 years or less.

When I graduated, I put on my resume that I knew MS Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. I had a pretty good grasp on InDesign and Quark. I could boast some pretty awesome technology skills considering I earned myself a D in computer literacy.

But I had no idea the depth of technology I would actually need to succeed in the world 8 years after graduation. Who knew PowerPoint could be used to design textbooks? I didn’t. But I sure learned quickly when my first company out of college insisted on it. And InDesign? I stopped using the program for two years, and with the newest edition I can barely draw a textbox, the interface is that different.

And you can forget about CRM. I didn’t know what the acronym meant.

My advice: Take every chance you’re given to learn any and all software/technology you can, even if it’s outside your department. You never know how a company will use technology or what scenarios you’ll be thrown into.

You don’t need a mentor, but if you have one use them.

I didn’t have a mentor, at least not for my career specifically. I had amazing friends and professors, like Dr. Rowe and Dr. Meagher, who helped to shape my life, but not so much with the ins-and-outs of marketing. What I did have was the social networking sites. And books.

If you’re lucky enough to have someone more advanced in their career to teach and guide you, use them. Learn everything you can from them. Ask questions and bounce ideas off the person. But most of all, be helpful for them. It takes time to develop relationships (and skills), and the best way to learn from a person is doing what they do.

My advice: If you don’t have a mentor, start reading. Read everything you can in your industry, especially if you’re a marketer. The industry is changing constantly, and we’re lucky to have so many resources at our fingertips. Stay on top of blogs like Hubspot and Marketo. Read everything Liz Ryan, Seth Godin, and Jay Baer write. Participate in communities like Inbound.org, and capitalize on resources like Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

The job title doesn’t mean as much as the job itself.

Whether you’re an assistant, a consultant, an associate, or a manager: it doesn’t matter. If you work in Marketing, Sales, Communication, Education, or Operations doesn’t matter. What does matter is what you did in those roles. Too often we put ourselves in a box based on our roles. I started out as a Curriculum Coordinator, which transitioned nicely to an Associate Editor. Then I hit a wall. Editing didn’t excite me. But here I was, stuck with the title “Editor” and into a box I crammed myself.

I realized marketing was my sweet spot after about two years of editing, but by then I had no idea how to get out of it. Thanks to some pretty intelligent colleagues and online gurus like Liz Ryan, I realized the problem wasn’t my job title. The problem was how I saw myself and, in turn, how I presented myself to others.

Plenty of my work, both as an editor and as a volunteer, qualified me to make the shift. I just needed to have the courage to call it out (and it helped to have the data to back up my success).

My advice: Start keeping track of what you do every day. Start with your logistics, and then give yourself a 10,000 foot view (borrowed from Ms. Ryan). As I once told an employee: You didn’t book hotels and caterers. You managed corporate events from sourcing to day-of coordination.