Lessons from School you Need to Unlearn

Years ago, I had a coworker who was new to office work. The work was technical and had to be just right, so I gave her a checklist of items she had to complete for every assignment. I'd review her work and see that she'd missed steps and I'd tell her to fix it. Finally she got upset and showed me the  checklist with items checked off, as if checking off boxes was the job. If it was a school assignment, where getting 70% is passing, she'd have been fine.

School assignments tend to be box-checking, academic exercises that you don't have to master and often don't relate to the real world. School itself bears little resemblance to real life. Sadly, some people carry school approaches into their adult lives. Here are some mental habits that schools instill, and that you need to shed.

No Fair! Wanting fairness doesn't make you immature, but refusing to help yourself because something wasn't your fault, does. Neighbors online complain sometimes that the city fines property owners who don't clean up graffiti. "We're getting fined for being vandalized!" they say. That kind of thinking works in school, where you can still get a good grade for your project even if a mean kid comes along and does damage to it. In real life? People who'd make nice neighbors aren't going to drive through a graffiti-filled neighborhood without deducting points for the graffiti--and the trash, and the weeds, and the stray dogs. It doesn't matter that you didn't put any of that there. Unchecked vandalism (and trashy-looking areas in general) drive out good neighbors and lower property values (and taxes collected by the county). In real life, if you don't clean up a mess, you live in a mess, and unlike a homework assignment it doesn't go away, but affects you and those around you until it's cleaned up.

They're so unapproachable! Like little kids, a lot of adults now seem to be afraid of stern-looking people. I'm not talking about people who are perpetually angry, rude or wildly unpredictable. More and more, I see the unapproachable label applied to people who simply go about their business or talk to people in a business-like way instead of like a kindergarten teacher. One of the few good things about being in the military was that I learned to talk to extremely unapproachable people. And you know what? Stern people don't waste your time. They'll usually deal with you fairly. Get your ducks in a row and talk to one--you're not a little kid anymore.

But I Did What I was Supposed to Do! Read: "I did the minimum required!" We've all had the aggravating experience of trying to sort out a difficult situation with a customer service rep who sticks to the script, seeing a doctor who listens to your symptoms indifferently and gives you a stock answer you know isn't right, or talking to a mate who says, "You didn't ask." In school, doing the minimum--showing up and doing well enough on homework and tests--is passable. In real life, it's known as being passive-aggressive and it annoys the shit out of people. Treat people as you'd like to be treated, treat life as a series of problems to be solved, and you'll get more appreciation and better outcomes.

But I Have an Excuse! A speaker at my junior high was taking questions about work when someone asked about excused absences. She replied, "What if you called an ambulance and got a recording saying your operator was out sick?" Things don't have to get done at school like they do in real life, and excuses don't count for much in the latter. Someone rear-ended me at a stoplight the other day. She got out of her pickup and immediately said she couldn't see because of her allergies. Hey, illness is an excuse, right? I said, "You know, you might want to avoid following so closely." She came back with an excuse about her sick kid and accused me of being mean to her (see unapproachable, above) as I glowered at her. What a dipshit. Leave yourself some room for error--leave the house a little early, leave some room between you and the car ahead of you, leave some money in the bank--and you won't often need an excuse.

But I Did Everything Right! Said in frustration when someone follows a conventional formula for success but doesn't get the expected result. Said in exasperation when slackers and grifters are getting ahead of you. Often, conventional formulas are good for getting moderate success. But when too many people follow them, they can fail. Occupations get oversupplied with people and wages go down--or all vacancies get filled; a huge number of people graduate from college and dilute the value of a degree; people tend to get into stocks in bull markets, just in time for prices to go down. But some conventional wisdom is bad from the get-go. Low-fat diets, for instance, are an epic fail for a lot of us. Real life isn't as simple as jumping through the right hoops to get the reward. In real life, doing everything right just means you probably won't end up destitute.

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Dropping these mental habits is part of becoming an adult. Having dropped these habits, I can tell you that dealing with people who haven't feels like dealing with children. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there it is. 

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