More GWP Fun From the Weary Parent

Char at Weary Parent, who won the Mistakes Made & Lessons Learned Group Writing Project last week, is now hosting a Group Writing Project of her own. By 11:59 on Thursday night, submit your own post about the best advice you received as a tween or teenager.

Here is my very, very confessional entry:

I was a very, very obnoxious teenager. I was deeply convinced of my own intelligence and, because I went to a high school where most of the teachers actually cared about their students, I was allowed to get away with my convictions. It was the kindest, most compassionate thing those teachers could have done for me.

As a result, I didn’t learn as much as I could have because I already knew everything.

One thing saved me: I grew up during a period of massive change.

In my family life, my father got leukemia and died when I was 15. I have a younger brother and sister. The family business was too much for my mother to handle alone, so we sold up and she went back to school to do her teaching degree. My parents had always been the kind of people who spent their extra time and money on books, which was great considering the number of kids whose parents spent their extra time and money on booze. I learned how to value learning. It was, I realize now, considered a good time itself. Our intellects partied hardy on our voluptuous vocabularies and dined on the histories of previous generations.

In the larger economy of our city, life was changing too. General Motors closed an assembly plant, thousands of people were laid off and with each of the jobs in the auto sector, two other jobs in the larger economy followed. No one knew what would happen.

In my last year of high school when everyone in my class was prepararing for university, one of our teachers gave us this advice:

“Stay in school as long as you can.”

He was an investor in local businesses and emerging businesses. He didn’t see anything on the horizon, he said, that would create new jobs until 1996. I knew nothing about finance or investments at the time, but staying in school reinforced all the ideas my mother had taught me about the value of learning. At that point, I didn’t have any plans beyond an undergraduate degree.

I would have graduated from university in 1994, but in my last year, the teacher’s words came back to me.

I made an impractical choice and spent another 2 years doing my MFA at a time when all arts degrees were being criticized as useless. I finished graducate school in 1996 and the Internet went from being a geeky tool for students and programmers to becoming a form of popular media. With the exception of 6 weeks between leaving one job and starting another, which were fun weeks, I have never been unemployed.