Let's face it.
In a world drenched in technology, it's important to acquire certain skills before saying "goodbye" to school and "hello" to the real world.
And that is exactly why Information Services has provided Student Technology Training.
The training includes workshops covered by the student technology fee and are essentially free to every student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The software, which is taught by student trainers at the workshops, includes Flash, Photoshop, Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Fireworks, SPSS, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, HTML, Blackboard and MovieMaker.
In addition to those software programs, students are invited to suggest any additional software that could be taught.
"We try to hit the popular ones, but we're always open for suggestions," said Linda Aden manager of Information Services' student technology training program.
For now, though, the chosen software workshops are already up and running, and classes run during the full calendar year.
"The workshops are very casual," Aden said. "Basically, we don't teach students everything they need to learn (about a certain software). If they need to use it, they know where to begin, and can do basic functions and a few more advanced functions."
Jake Meador, a freshman English major, took a couple of the classes to learn Adobe Illustrator, and next month he will begin to teach InDesign workshops.
He also hopes to learn how to teach more programs.
To Meador, it's a very beneficial job.
"It's a great job for students. We're actually getting paid to learn and teach (software), so it's a really unique opportunity."
Students can visit http://training.unl.edu to check the schedule of these workshops, and also sign up for them.
"It's a great place to learn useful software," Meador said.
After signing up for the workshop, all that's left to do is just show up.
According to Aden, most of the workshops have only one session, but the more advanced software workshops can have up to four consecutive sessions.
Because there are only about 15 seats in each class, the workshops are often repeated to accommodate people's different schedules.
Aden said Information Services provides at least one workshop for every software program each month, for a total of about 80 per semester.
The goal of these workshops is to provide students with skills they could need in future careers.
"Our basic premise was to fill a gap between what students needed to know and what was being taught," Aden said. "We recognized that no one was really teaching software."
