The Malaysian Insider :: Books
The Malaysian Insider :: Books |
| So what happens after school ends? Posted: 16 Dec 2012 04:52 PM PST KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 17 – "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer." — Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture They say that at the end of an education you are set free. You are equipped with all you need to face the world. You are ready. You have your whole future ahead of you. This is, of course, a rather convenient lie. It's easy enough to believe this myth, this constant assertion from our parents, from Society, from our wonderful education system (or what attempts to pass for one). From my experience though, the world may be ready for us but we are never ready for the world – if all we have is simply our education? As a kid, I wasn't a geek or a nerd or anything interesting like that. I wasn't smart. I was consistently making my grades and managed to scrape through to university as expected of me. I did my degree in telecommunications engineering. Later, I even completed an MBA (because it's always cool getting another acronym-ed certification, right?). It was great. I was getting an education, plenty of it in fact. The only problem was: I wasn't learning a single damn thing.
See, it's quite different getting an education and being busy attending lectures and passing examinations versus actually learning anything useful from all that. Most of us — well, certainly me — have a tendency to assume once we have graduated, we're quite done. Now, off to a glamorous job with a decent pay package that we are obviously entitled to after all those years slogging at tutorials and theses. And some of us do get that. But we stop learning, if ever we were learning before, even. The thing is, if we don't keep learning, if we have stopped learning, then we are already dead, just automatons filing through the production lines of someone else's life. Does it matter if our bodies grow and age, that our bank accounts expand or diminish, if our minds, if our hearts and our souls and our passions stay stagnant and rapidly expire? Yes, rapidly — you'd be surprised how quickly the mundane routines of a "good day" can set a pattern from which we rarely escape. We build our homes and our comfort zones and refuse to budge from either. We become fearful beings, greedily and pettily protecting what we think we own, whatever possessions that make up our current market value. We transform into robots that constantly calculate what they are worth. But what worth are we if we don't move, if we accept everything that is thrown at us, if we regard evil as an unavoidable nuisance in our daily lives that can be tolerated if we ignore it enough. History has no lessons for us, for we seem unable to learn from it. The end of our education should not be the end of our learning. "When we're connected to others, we become better people." — Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture Lately, I've been discovering how important it is to keep learning from my friend who runs a programme to help social entrepreneurs scale up their businesses. She had roped me in to help mentor a bakery run by learning-impaired people. I was to mentor them about marketing their products but I think I've learned more from understanding why they do this. They could have remained a charitable organisation and waited for hand-outs but they would rather earn their own living; they just need help to get started. They are so willing and so hungry to learn. And so it is with my friend: she tells me she does not fear making mistakes, only not having made them, because she knows a life without having made mistakes is to have not really lived a life at all. She never stops learning, and she works hard at giving back to those around her. "The person who failed often knows how to avoid future failures. The person who knows only success can be more oblivious to all the pitfalls." — Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture To be honest, I am ashamed of myself for quitting this path of learning (perhaps I never stepped foot on it in the first place). I have learned that this is okay. I am inspired. I want to do more, to be more of who I can be. To make my life worth something, not in ringgit and sen, but in how much I can contribute and grow and help others do the same. My school days are over. It may be the end of education for me but today I am beginning to learn and shall do so till I cease. "Go out and do for others what somebody did for you." — Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture I can't wait to make my first mistake of the day — and to learn from it! The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow (Hyperion, 2008) * Kenny is busy making mistakes. Read more of his stories at lifeforbeginners.com. |
"A lot of people want a shortcut. I find the best shortcut is the long way, which is basically two words: work hard." — Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
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