The befuddled nun glared down at me as she angrily paged through the mostly blank assignments in my handwriting workbook. It was the last week of third grade. The punishment I was dealt for my lack of diligence was to sit and complete as many pages as I could, while the other kids watched movies. By the end of the week I hadn’t come anywhere close to catching up with my colleagues, who instead of embracing anarchy had completed the year’s worth of homework. And then, I moved on to the fourth grade. I was ten years old and had just been dealt the most important lesson of my life, a lesson that would take a majority of the next twenty-two years for me to begin to truly understand: If you don’t do what you’re told, things will most likely turn out fine.
After the third grade I began to seek out shortcuts in scholastic participation. Cliff notes became a favorite tool in lieu of reading assignments, and I became quite adept at mental math, mostly so I didn’t have to write as much when solving equations. As early as sixth grade I began doing a cost/benefit analysis of sorts on each assignment, estimating how much I could get away with not completing and still achieve an above average to average grade. By the time I got to high school this system was up and running, and by senior year I couldn’t turn it off. I was accused by several teachers of being an underachiever or just outright laziness. Upon visiting the school counselor I was “diagnosed” with a slow processing speed, and offered extra time on tests, an offer I rejected since it meant more time doing school work.
At this point I began to embrace the opinions of the authority figures, “maybe I am just lazy”, “maybe I just need to find a way to motivate myself.” For the next several years I was haunted by these poisonous mantras, “how do I get motivated?,” “I need to focus on these assignments,” “I can do this.” But I kept waiting until the last minute to do assignments and then seeking out as many shortcuts as possible. The lesson of my third grade handwriting book had been cast deep into the back of my mind, and I continued for years to try and turn off the underachievement and do what I was told.
When I got to college I discovered that attendance for many classes was not mandatory, and that many assignments could be completed online. This gave me more free time to discover and pursue my interests. Freshman year of college I became a much better guitar player, I discovered that I actually enjoyed reading, and I became dedicated to exercise and lifting weights. The problem was that these achievements had nothing to do with the curriculum in which I was enrolled.
I was now in the position of investing an astronomical amount of money that I did not have into an education in which I had placed an absolute minimal interest and effort. Surprisingly, when I graduated I could not find a job. I was in quite a substantial amount of debt with no potential return on investment. Having minored in Economics, and having not paid attention in class, I decided the answer was to consume more unwanted education. After all it was what I was supposed to do.
Organized education had finally run its course in my life when my system of underachievement failed catastrophically in graduate school, and in a last gasp for air, went down in flames in law school. It turns out that the higher levels of education require a pretty serious amount of effort. In a continuation of this lack of overall effort, I had fallen into place in the work force taking a position at the company where my Dad works and working with him pretty much every day. I had finally pressed the Reset To Factory Settings button on my life, aside from the minor detail of the astronomical debt I owed for school.
The folder in which I keep the documents pertaining to my college loans on my desktop is titled “Bottemless Pit of Misery.” These loans are an endless reminder of what I have accomplished by doing what I was told. As it turns out, I was smarter in the third grade than I was throughout the entirety of high school and college. At ten years old I took a calculated risk, choosing my free time over hours of fruitless monotony. The results of this act of defiance paid out in my favor, as I never had to complete dozens of pointless assignments, I learned to write regardless and I didn’t even have to learn cursive because for all extensive purposes it is a dead style of writing. However, several years down the road I continuously took the advice of teachers and professors to motivate myself to fill out all of those pages to nowhere and accomplish years of expensive pointless busywork.
The question remains, when, after all this education, did I finally become as smart as a third grader? When did I again start to realize that if you don’t do all that society expects, things will turn out fine? The answer is about three years ago when my whole perspective on the world and the entities that we consider “authorities” had changed. As it goes in the old tale, you don’t have to be much smarter than a third grader to realize that the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
So how do I plan to apply this lesson? You’re reading it. Launching this site, the content I create, the hours I pour into this project all to demonstrate the importance of embracing personal autonomy. I have found the underlying key to self-improvement is to take back the control you have relinquished to arbitrary authority. In other words, start making your own decisions and stop listening to naked emperors.
Most of us spend too much of our time filling out pointless busy work. It’s time to put the pen down and go outside and play. And when the teacher comes to collect your unfinished work. Turn it in. You’ll be fine.