This page attempts to outline essential job skills that employers (and co-workers) want to see. They're things that aren't necessarily taught, but that one picks up coincidentally during their college career.
Seriously. The number of cOlLeGe-EdUcAtEd people who spent thousands upon thosuands of dollars "learning how to learn" apparently didn't pay extra for the How To Google course. Without being explicitly told how and when to do this, they simply throw their hands up when they encounter something new. It's not rocket science. There's not much to learn. The only real skill is not simply taking the first result as the final truth. When I say "google search", I usually mean "google searches". Just make it a habit to search for things you don't know (including criticism, alternative routes, adjacent subjects, other schools of thought, etc). ChatGPT is pretty good at outlining around a subject, but I don't quite trust it with specific facts yet, because it frequently conflates related ideas.
Nobody in The Real World gives a shit if you use MLA or APA format, and most would likely prefer you just DM them a link to whatever you're talking about.
However, the time will come when you must write some kind of email, report, or cover letter.
if u rite like dis nobody will respond to ur email becuz theyll thik ur either dumb or unedumacated or just plane lazie and besides no1 wants 2 read long unpunctuated sentences lie dis becuz its mentally straining and u just somehow no that at the end of it u wont really learn anything but ppl still do this surprisingly and so lesson 1 is that this is the lowest of bars to beat just dont be like dis and ull be a step ahead of those dirty peasants whow couldnt afford a degree becuz not having a degree isnt an excuse to type liek an illiterate teenager
So, practice writing. Get feedback on your writing. Practice writing some more. Take one (or two) of the millions of free-or-low-cost writing programs available online.
I'd like to split "problem-solving" into two categories:
When encountering small, specific problems (which I'll call "puzzles") there are often a few ways to solve it, with one or two well-known, efficient solutions. Some of these problems are covered in textbooks because they're representitive of one of those well-known, efficient solutions (e.g., quadratic equation). By repeating these problems, you learn to both recognize good places for the solution as well as how to apply it.
Other small, discrete problems involve only a basic ability to reason about the world (which requires understanding, to some extent, how it works - not just how it should work). For example, navigating public transit in a new city. Some cities take cash, others require a card. Sometimes, it's a fixed fee; other times, the fee changes based on stop. There's inbound and outbound lines, peak and off-peak hours, special weekend and holiday routes, etc. Nobody - not even New Yorkers - are born with the ability to navigate a transit system. Some learn it by following their parents for years, but you can learn it simply by taking a few moments to read the requirements (and ask for clarification if you're confused). The solution here is simple, and one that I've been advocating throughout this entire website: read. This is how you pass the DIY Degree Exam of not embarrassing yourself in real life by acting like a damn tourist and holding everyone up during rush hour.
Once you can make sense of other peoples' answers to a given problem (say, climate change), you can begin to formulate your own. Don't worry, nobody should get hurt at this stage. Instead, you'll likely find that your ideas have already been thought of. Maybe there's a really obvious answer as to why a given idea won't work, or isn't as effective as it might seem. Keep at it, and keep refining your "hypothesis" as you learn more and more. This is a general approach to high-level problems.