Life is like a box of, uh, boxes?
Wait, there's a cheat sheet that isn't considered cheating? Tick.
Generation Ex explores every ‘ex’ in our lives - our expertise, our expectations and our experiences - and how they can be a catalyst for personal growth when your professional (or personal) journey suddenly shifts under your feet.
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School failed me.
Now, before you call bullshit and throw your computer against the wall, let me be clear. I did plenty of failing of it, so, as far as that goes, let’s call it even.
In terms of preparing me for life ‘beyond the wall’, though, I might as well have been dropped into an episode of Game of Thrones wondering what my new found Dothraki friends were going to make for me with that molten pot of gold. Don’t know but I’m sure it will be shiny and expensive!
Naive, unprepared, and choc full of self-assured stupidity. The poster boy for not knowing what I didn’t know.
It’s taken decades to learn but the problem I have is that I’m not really a rubric kind of guy.
In all honesty, I had never heard that word until my son’s year five (that’s 5th grade, Americans) teacher said all anyone needed to excel in school is to follow ‘the rubric’.
I had to look it up.
Apparently, it’s a set of tick-box instructions for any academic endeavor (that’s endeavour, Australians) that if ticked accordingly, any paper, test, drawing, speech, finger painting, or interpretive dance would ensure you high marks.
I can literally hear you shaking your head saying, ‘no shit’…
Well, bully for you.
Even my American friends, where this isn’t actually an articulated idea in school (that I know of), knew instinctively that there were boxes to tick.
Great, but what to do with the rest of us?
What about the student who’s reaction to an assigned history essay on, say, the horrors of the Vietnam War and the impact of X on Z (I wasn’t listening) is to craft a homemade, coffee-soaked, edge burned parchment paper letter from an imagined soldier to his mother the day before he is forever lost to her somewhere along the Mekong River Delta.
Demonstrate explicit understanding of the geopolitical fallout of the US and its ‘Domino Theory’ of communism … nope
Grasp and articulate the underlying reasons for the fall of colonial French Indochina and the subsequent US decision to appoint Ngo Dinh Diem to lead the South… uh, répétez, s’il vous plaît?
Should be exactly 1000 words… do ‘ums’ count?
It almost makes you cry… TICK!
Tick, tick, FAIL.
Like the dazzle reflex to sneeze when exposed to bright light, I spent most of my academic career blasting creative particulates at any and all rubrics regardless of stated assignment or legitimately crafted assessment.
The world expects creative spin when you’re tasked with making chili, not when the assignment is to proof Geometry problems (that’s a thing, right?).
This is how I got to my senior year in college not ever realizing there were actually science requirements to graduate with a Liberal Arts degree…
‘Liberal’
(as in free-thinking, right? As in pinball as an independent study, right? As in, do you get credits for classes you perceive you’re taking while on mushrooms?)
‘Arts’
(as in, NO SCIENCE!)
W. T. Flying F.?!
So many boxes to tick.
Thank god for the university’s Jackson Hole summer geology program. All the rocks you can eat in eight weeks and 6 credits. Emmersive, hands on and fully practical.
The only science class I passed after 9th grade.
But I don’t want to make this post about me (hahahahahhaha).
No, school didn’t fail me because of school. School failed me because I stumbled out the door never realizing there were boxes at all.
A Forrest Gumpian kind of trajectory that, while having been able to wander through some amazing places professionally, lacked the focused progression of many of my tick-boxing colleagues.
But now, sitting on my bus stop bench, chocolates in hand, a question forms that has only come with the clarity of finally understanding my own journey from there to here.
What happens when you DO tick all the boxes?
What happens when you spend a childhood, a career, much of a life completing every assignment given and you slowly realize you are still desperately unhappy or worse yet, shown the door at a certain point because… well, because?
At least I learned my disappointment early.
As this writing grows and my commitment to putting it out there hardens, I get more and more feedback from people who read as well as those unfortunate souls who have to hear me blather on about it in real life over coffee or lunch.
So many people are wrestling with this feeling of unfulfilled intention, at best, or impending doom and outright betrayal, at worst. And I don’t mean those who ‘didn’t make it’ by any professional or academic measurement. In fact, the ones who did are seemingly hit the hardest when the hammer drops.
Brilliant friends who suddenly feel too old, too expensive or too pigeonholed to think there is any hope beyond the shadow of another corporate restructure. They’ve done everything that’s been asked of them and live in growing fear of their professional obsolescence, wondering what the hell they will do then.
As you now know, my hard-wired instinct to solve this problem is to learn to make an origami monkey and leave it on the dashboard of their car… Tick. Tick. Fail…
But maybe I can try my hand at something entirely new to me but familiar to, well, most everyone else.
Here is my rubric for high distinction (that’s an ‘A’, Americans) to follow as you move from who you thought you were into who you might become:
Demonstrate a clear understanding of the idea ‘what you do’ is not ‘who you are’
Develop and articulate a ‘pathway to purpose’, ensuring that what you do next is now driven by who you really are.
Identify people in your life who understand your journey and are willing to fortify your efforts to build a more fulfilling path.
Invest in curiosity
How will you know you’re doing it right?
It will almost make you cry.
Tick, tick… BOOM.