Rules for High School Graduates

The Internet is so funny, everyone acknowledges that Bill Gates did not in fact, make up these rules, but they are listed on google sites as 'Bill Gates Rules' as we have apparently all agreed to call them that. Having just argued with DS about manners and not had an open and accepting response, these rules resonated with me:

RULE 1 - Life is not fair, get used to it. (hence this great photo of a seagull snatching the dolphin's fish away. Those sneaky seagulls are everywhere!)

RULE 2 - The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

RULE 3 - You will NOT make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both.

RULE 4 - If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

RULE 5 - Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger-flipping; they called it opportunity.

RULE 6 - If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

RULE 7 - Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try "delousing" the closet in your own room.

RULE 8 - Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades; they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

RULE 9 - Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

RULE 10 - Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

RULE 11 - Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Okay, some are a little harsh, and in the work place there are plenty of divas and coasters, just like in High School, but the idea of doing something hard for the intrinsic reward of a feeling of accomplishment, that is something I want to inculcate. And if we are creating rules, I would add - be polite, it costs nothing and leaves a lasting (good) impression.

Just in Case vs Just in Time

You know when you hear a new idea and you just know it's right...

So a friend of mine was telling me about Just in Case vs Just in time, how it impacts manufacturing (do you keep nuts and bolts just in case you need them, taking up cash and inventory space, or do you keep abreast of what you need and order them, just in time. Traditional manufacturing used to have a lot of just in case stuff lying around, leaner, more profitable manufacturing keeps it's cash and inventory freer and orders things to be just in time. Of course, you need some sensitivity and balance here, but that's the idea in a nutshell) and, more importantly (for me!) are you doing this in your life (as I have no factories to manage.)

Certainly in my life I have plenty of Just in Case (JIC) things in my cupboard - sensible things, like medicines that I don't need now, but keep just in case I get a cold, and, many more foolish things I keep, just in case I might want day need them, or even more likely, find a use for them. I'm actually not one of those people who have great emotional difficulty throwing things out. I like clutter free zones. So if even I can immediately see I have way too many JIC items in my house, I'm pretty sure everyone does.

And I feel that a lot of this JIC stuff is taking up way too much psychic (and financial!) inventory. Sometimes there's not enough room for new thoughts, new people, new ideas in our lives, because we are so cluttered with the backlog of JIC stuff that we are carrying around. I think I could discard some of it and have more options to collect things JIT.

But when I went to google this phrase, I came across all sorts of interesting blogs/information of JIC vs JIT and learning (don't you just love the internet!) Lots of computer people are writing about how we learn - how the entire school learning seems to be JIC information - in case you become a doctor, you need to know this, learn it now, it has no outside world relevance now but learn it any case. There are studies that prove learning information that has no extraneous use is harder to both learn and recall, than learning information that you need to know now (JIT knowledge.) One eg given was - if you buy a new phone and read the instructions, and put them into effect, you are far more like to remember them, than if you read instructions for a phone you don't own and may never want.

Well, if you put it like that, obviously you aren't going to recall the technical specs for phones you don't own or want. But that is how we approach a lot of our teaching of high school kids. And the second I read that I knew it to be true. I know it to be true from my own life experience (how much of what we sweated to learn have we ever referred to in later years?) and from what I see of students learning today.

I do believe there is knowledge that people should have just to be citizens of the world - you don't have to know every historical fact, but a sense of history gives you a sense of time and place, even if you don't know why you need to know it right now. However, if you embed history in a story that the students find relevant they are far more likely to listen in the first place and be able to recall it later.

Ditto with science and math. If I give you math problems which are totally abstract (my personal bete noir - if two trains from different stations leave at different times and lots of other details, when will they meet?) solving them is complex and formulaic. But if I tell you, you have $117.37 to buy your favorite songs, but, and add in complications/give you 12% extra or something else, now tell me how much music you can buy.. (or, if you want an adult eg - you bought your house for X amount/square foot, now, it's selling for Y amount/sqf, what's the new total - I've seen people do that in their head after a bottle of wine!) Embedding the knowledge in personally relevant information moves the learning from JIC to JIT, and makes everything easier...