Jack Hamilton
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday Morning at 8am
Veterans Association
Raul Gilbert
Tel 650.566.0240, Email RGilbert@vetsresource.org
Before I visited the Palo Alto VA, I planned to help out veterans with
their issues relating to technology. I
understood that many veterans used the facilities of the VA to help
re-integrate into society by finding jobs and making connections with housing
agencies. Many of the Veterans were
having trouble with finding jobs because of the technology barrier. They needed help with setting up email
accounts, saving their resumes so that they could view them later, and
communicating with recruiters online.
For the most part, I helped with all of these, although the veterans
were hesitant to put in the time to set these things up, leading to them saving
personal documents on the public computers, which was not allowed by the VA.
During my first three visits, I learned that it was sometimes really
difficult to try to get people to agree with you. Some of the veterans were very hesitant to
let me help set up online accounts for them, even while it may have helped them
in the long run. I had to put myself in
their shoes, and learn from it. For the
most part, they would have seen me as a young kid trying to tell them the right
way to do things, which was different from the way they wanted to do
things. I had to back off and try to be
less commanding and more sympathetic.
The veterans wanted jobs, but they didn’t want to answer to a young kid.
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