Gen Shift
When I was in college in the early 1990s, one of my best friends’ dad made the following observation: “Son, you only have two responsibilities right now: to have fun and get good grades. And you’re failing at one of them.” I imagine you can guess which of the two he was referring to.
Yesterday I went hiking with another close friend, a father of twins aged 16. We started talking about this and laughing at our friend. Then we quickly realized how much has changed in 30 years. If anything, you could see a parent having to say the opposite: “You need to focus a bit less on grades and have a little more fun!"
Astonishing but true. Ideally, of course, you do both if you are a high school, college, or graduate student. But let me be the first to say I don’t regret a single bad grade I got — and I fell too far on the “fun” side of the equation. What I do regret is not having a vision and passion for real learning. I think about the incredible classes at my fingertips in the years I spent at Vanderbilt as an undergraduate student, then the University of Alabama in business school and Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt again for my doctoral work. Between those schools, there was virtually a limitless number of fascinating subjects for me to cover. But still, I wish it would have been in the pursuit of learning, not just for a grade.
Some would push back. “The grades you get dictate the schools you go to and thus the opportunities you are given.” Macro data would lead one to believe this may be true. But that data has a huge confounding variable: yes, people who get good grades tend to go to better schools, which tend to produce better starting points at graduation. But many such people also have passion for learning, and hence the strong grades. Having a passion for anything healthy, I would posit, will lead you to where you want to be in life. Far more important than a static letter at the end of a semester.
My grades in college were far from strong. But I did have a heck of a lot of passion. I’d argue that if you find your passion, that’s the real fulcrum upon which your professional and personal life rests. Which is a good way to end this blog. The same father who said that quote to my friend, he visited me in my office years later when I was an assistant dean at a law school. “I can’t believe how far you’ve come,” he said to me. To which I replied with a bit more bravado than I usually speak with: “I always knew I would.”
Don’t doubt yourself if you get a bad grade or more. Don’t doubt yourself for having a bit of fun. Ideally, those two will be balanced and both will be sky-high. I’ve found that I am often the happiest when I am also the busiest. But, if the seesaw is entirely weighted down by either one, please know that it doesn’t have to be. It isn’t all about grades. It isn’t all about fun. At the end of the day, your passion for what you do is what is going to make your life, never a letter on a piece of paper or computer screen.
– Mike Spivey 2/21/2022
We are our own griefs. We are our own happinesses. We are our own remedies.