An Absolute Guide to Success for Teens and Twenty-somethings.

I have both a B.S. and a Masters degree, the latter from Harvard University. Now from that simple statement anyone who did not know me would probably think I am a pretty smart guy who did really well in life. Well, truth be told, only one of those statements is true, I am indeed a pretty smart guy. Now comes the “but.” But I miss pretty much every opportunity afforded me in my teens and twenties. I am pretty certain I received a PhD in missed opportunities.

When I was in high school I managed to be so thoroughly distracted, mostly by girls, that I was unable to complete most assignments. From age 14 to 18 I spent far too many hours thinking about the girl of my dreams, which varied of course, when I really needed to be doing my homework.

Did I tell you I am a contradiction in terms? I am! From when I was about 6, I always found a way to earn money. True, most of that money went to buying candy and ice cream but I was happy and satisfied. I had a paper route for about 3 years, ages 11 to 14. When I turned 14 I had a full time summer job on a local farm which I went back to when I was 15. At 16 I worked in one of the local factories, a true sweat shop. Loved it! One of the best educations of my life. And finally, when I was 17 I got a job at Raytheon company as a clerk. Seems I could type pretty well. I earned 5 cents more per hour than a girl my age who did nearly the exact same job I did. I knew I was unfair.

After graduation from high school I was headed for Boston University. I had gained early acceptance, November of the previous year, and thought I was good to go. Well, nothing could have been further from the truth. Before the first semester had ended I knew my college career had ended. Prime reason, I was constantly daydreaming about the girl of my dreams which varied. Oh, and I was not doing my assignments.

By December of that year I had decided that a career in the army would be a good thing. I took their various tests and actually managed to get myself into flight school, no easy task. No one breezes through basic training but once I had completed that I was on to my dream, flight school. In the army that means you are going to rotary wing (helicopter) training which, in those days, started at Fort Wolters Texas and was completed at Fort Rucker Alabama. It did not even take me a month to drop out of that. Still, certain people saw promise in me, enrolled me in the following class, and suggested I take that opportunity, one which was seldom offered. I declined. I had had enough. In truth, quitting seemed easier. Enough said about that save over the next 18 months I received every promotion I was eligible for in the minimum time required.

I was a two-year enlistee who got out and headed directly back to college. I mean, who can fail twice? Ah, but I was head of the curve this time. I had the girl of my dreams, was head over heels in love with her, life was wonderful! And yet, in spite of that, I managed to fail every class in which I was enrolled. And so what do you think I did next? No, I did not go into the army but I did go to flight school.

This flight school was of the fixed wing variety held in Tulsa Oklahoma. And as it turned out, I was a natural pilot. This time I pushed myself just enough so that after 5 hours of flight time, the minimum time required by the FAA before a person can fly solo. I soloed during my 6^th hour. Time passed, my flight time mounted up, I took and passed the FAA written test required for a private pilot’s license. Oh, and during this time I held down a full time job as an orderly at a hospital in Tulsa. One day, while driving home from that hospital, I daydreamed for a moment or two but I was exactly enough time that I did not see the person stopped in front of me until it was too late. I managed to total two cars and decided it was time to go back home and do what?

That question got answer just before I left Tulsa when talking with my mother on the phone she asked why the army was looking for me. She assured me she had not told them where I was but I knew the gig was up, again. You see, I was supposed to be going to reserve army meetings for two years following my separation from active duty. I had attended exactly zero.

I bit the bullet, headed for the local army recruiter and confessed my sins. He had a nice laugh on me but in truth I was actually happy to be returning to the army. It was a safe place for me, and I actually liked it. During my first three years back in the army I managed to successfully navigate two years of college education via the local University of Maryland campus. Now a reasonable person would think that within the next three years I would complete that degree and all would be well. That is not exactly how it went. During those 3 years I got married, had a child and allowed just about everything to impede my college education. I took me until 1986 to finally get that B.S. degree. I did not mention this before but I entered Boston University in September 1967. You might say I was just a tad slow, or, you might hold me to a higher standard and say I found far too many excuses for not succeeded while giving not a single good reason.

I started my graduate education at Harvard University in September 1986. That degree took me far too long too, but let me just say, it was more of the same stuff I have already related so why repeat myself.

What does any of this have to do with those of you who are in your teens and twenties. Everything!

I am 66 years of age now, retired and enjoying pretty much everything life sends me its way. But my retirement has also allowed me the time to give my life considerable and very honest review. What I discovered is absolutely appalling. I found that I had missed pretty much every opportunity which came my way from age 11 through 30, a full twenty years! How could that happen? How could a rather intelligent person, which I am, miss just about every opportunity? Simple. I did not see a single one for what it really was.

When you are 18-years-old truly believe that you have this infinite pool of time ahead of you. That is mistake number one, always! Life happens a day at a time and even though at times it seems incredibly and boringly slow, those minutes are just as important as any other collection of minutes in your life.

I really believe that it rare that an 18-year-old had any inkling as to what he wants to be doing come age 40. And why is age 40 so important? Two reasons: first changing professions at that age is extremely difficult and, two, like it or not, age discrimination comes into play. Cry all you like about it being against the law, which it is, but just try proving it! That means that by age 30 you really really need to be doing a job you look forward to and cannot imagine doing anything else. That was not me.

Okay, so what should you do to insure that at age 40 you are right when you both want and need to be? Be on the lookout for opportunities and explore each and every one to the fullest extent possible. Ah, so what is an opportunity?

Failure! Failure is one of the best opportunities of all. Failure, by definition, says you tried something but did not succeed. Failure is the most prevalent opportunity any human will ever experience. Do not quote me on this, but I believe Thomas Edison failed over 200 times before he finally found a filament that worked in his light bulb. It is likely that the incandescent light bulb would have been invented eventually anyway, but it was Edison completing the task because he did not take failure as meaning hopeless. He saw it as meaning he needed to find another way of doing things. And that is exactly how failure becomes an opportunity every time.

It took me two shots at algebra and two shots at geometry to get each right once. Had I carried that forward most, if not all, of my failures could have been turned into successes. But I did not. It was always easier to say why something could not happen than ask the question of how could I make it happen. And this is where you come to a universal truth. Going it alone will probably get you lost. But ask for help and you will probably find the way. And never ever let anyone tell you that you cannot do something. They probably do not know what they are talking about anyway.

Instead of finding an excuse, find a way. For example, you are getting ready to graduate high school and you happen to notice that your grades are average and that being said by a generous person. But you find, of a sudden, this desire to be a nurse, a lawyer, an architect, the best trumpeter ever, or pretty much anything else. Your first response is going to be that such lofty goals are now unachievable. Bull shit! They are all achievable but you must find an alternate path. That means instead of graduating from medical school at age 27, you might have to graduate at age 30. So what? Start with something you can do. I suggest community college. It is affordable and pretty much takes on all comers. Plus, it is college and its credits are generally transferable to not only the state schools but to most private colleges and universities. But most importantly, once started, do not let anyone or anything stop you until you have reached your ultimate goal. But be warned, your ultimate goal is likely to change while you are attending college. Hell, you may even change career fields entirely but that is part of learning.

If you do not think that is true, pick any highly successful person you know and ask them one simple question: as them what was their biggest failure prior to becoming whatever they are and how they overcame that.

One more thing about your aspiration, find someone who is successful in your field of choice and asked them to tell you in some detail what it took for them to get where they are.

Finally, along the way you are going to run into difficulties, some greater than others. But there are going to be a certain number of difficulties where you have only one choice and that is to ask for help. Do it! Make no excuses for not doing it. Do not project what you think the person you are asked for help is going to think of you. The thing is, it is human nature that we enjoy being asked for help. And, this is important, that first person does not have an answer for you, do not leave without asking if they know someone who might know. And if they do not know that either, keep looking until you find the needed help. And never ever miss an opportunity to nail down your professor and them him or her that you are 100% confused over a point, a concept, or anything else. Those are the things people who do not quit do. And those are the things I failed to do on a regular basis.

Finally, there is this idea of inherent intelligence going around. I happen to know I am a very intelligent guy but it does not seem to have done me a lot of good, at least until recent years. I truly believe that most people underestimate their actual intelligence. If someone looks at your high school record and tells you what your listed IQ is, I recommend that if it is less than what you think it should be, put it off to your having had a bad day the day of the test and that you are in fact far more intelligent than some test says you are. I say this because more likely than not, you are.

Every mistake you make gives you a bit of valuable information. It tells you where you made a wrong turn. Return to that point and make the right turn. Make absolutely everything which happens to you in your teens and twenties learning experiences, commit them to memory, get advice on some of them, and use them to your advantage wherever possible. If your mother wants you to become a doctor and your father wants you to become a lawyer and you want to become a chef, get yourself into that chef’s school. Own you decisions, own your mistakes, never lie, and never quit.

Education’s Biggest Problem: Getting Students to Learn, Teaching Them to Study

I am a pretty smart guy.  I have been told so my entire life even though I oft-times doubted it.  I did graduate from college, and then got a graduate degree from Harvard.  But, I did not even come close to achieving my potential.  The reasons for this belief are numerous but are rooted in my primary and secondary education.  At no time during those years was I ever taught how to study, and more importantly, how to deal with failure.

For the past five plus years I have been involved with primary grade school children.  They are expected to learn more, and at an earlier age, than I ever was.  But the most confounding problem for them, and the teachers, is getting any particular student to learn what is being offered.  A minority of student learn in spite of adverse situations and in the absence of being told how to study.  They, the fortunate few, will succeed regardless of circumstances.  But for most students, learning is an ongoing challenge but I contend that it is more of a challenge than need be.

Before I ever finished my junior year in public high school, I realized that any chance I had at getting into college meant I needed to change something.  To that end I convinced my parents to send me to a prep-school where distractions were minimized and I was able, mostly on my own, to gain the grades needed to get into not just any college, but a good college.  The problem was, and I found this out during my first semester in college, was I had absolutely no idea of how to study.

Studying is not natural.  Human beings have ingrained in them the natural desire to eat, sleep, and reproduce.  Everything else we humans need must be gained either via experience or education.  While experience is a fabulous teacher, saying we take experience as a teacher, our ability to study and learn something is neither natural nor guaranteed.  But proper studying need not be a trial and error sort of endeavour.  There are people who are well-versed in the art of study and its application.  The problem is, this knowledge is not being made available to our children, particular at early ages when it is the easiest to apply and practice.  In stead, children are largely left to their own devices.  A young person really has no idea of a successful way to study.

I remember in my young years often feeling overwhelmed by school assignments.  It was not unusual for me to either do them incompletely or not at all.  Too often I was so clueless of how to start that I gave up before I even tried.  Other times, I would have a study assignment of some sort and have no idea of how to retain what I was tasked to study.  By the time a test came I was frantic to do well and too often failed.

Studying is something that requires scheduling which is not natural to humans in general or to children in particular.  Within that there needs to be a plan.  The plan necessarily means breaking up an assignment into parts, completing it as best possible, and returning to the classroom with a list of written questions to bring back to the teacher.  But these ideas are not only not taught to students, they are not even hinted at.  This may be our public education system’s biggest failing.  The thing is, it can resolved easily and without a large insertion of time and money.  It simply needs to be added to every school’s curriculum in every year of a child’s education until he graduates from high school.

One thing every student is confronted with is fear, both of failure and of negative criticism.  A student who needs to ask a question does not do so because it is his belief that his question is “too dumb” or that his having to admit that he has absolutely no idea what a teacher means by what he is saying will be poorly received.  It is incumbant on schools systems to make the learning process as easy and comfortable as possible.  Inherent to that end is giving the student a written form of how to do things.  For example, the student does not understand what the teacher has been explaining.  On his written booklet is a highlighted question that deals with this exact problems and two, or more, ways to deal with such a problem; either the student makes the statement in the moment that he does not understand at all, or, goes up to the teacher immediately following the lesson and states his concern.  Buttressing this is the teacher reassuring the student from the beginning of the class year that such is the good and proper way to deal with problems.  Such problem solving becomes an education unto itself and enhances the education process.

Dealing with problems is something people experience their entire life.  But a healthy approach to dealing with problems is not a natural process but rather a learned thing.  Leaving such experience entirely to trial-and-error is both extremely inefficient and unnecessary.  Simply by teaching such principles at an early age helps every person with living successful and manageable lives.