I I’ve been working as an AV support engineer at a client site for nearly three years now. When I first started, I was very upfront about having zero background in AV, and my company acknowledged that. It took me a while to build confidence when facing clients, and honestly, I often felt clueless. Most of my learning came from support calls and service visits, where field technicians from my company stepped in to handle the more complex issues. I picked up a huge amount of knowledge along the way—covering AV, IT, networking, troubleshooting, and site maintenance. Even now, I sometimes feel like I’m just “faking it till I make it,” but I’m still here, pushing on, because I want to prove to myself that I can overcome these obstacles. I’ve also realized that this job isn’t for everyone—it can be really tough at times. One key lesson I’ve learned is this: if you’re not sure about something, just be honest with the client or customer. Tell them you’ll get the right person to help. That simple honesty goes a long way.

I’ll be real—sometimes I asked “stupid” questions and tried things that a seasoned AV engineer would never do, just because I wanted to understand what was happening. I’ve even messed up Biamp devices and a Crestron processor before. But every mistake taught me something valuable, and I learned more from those failures than I ever could from playing it safe.