Shifting gears: Grad student redux

Remember Former Finnegan No. 3? Right brain happy, left brain starting to gasp for air, the creative part in the middle trying to get the left & right to find a common course. Just when something needed to give, I was inspired by my boss's enthusiasm for teaching as a sideline and I thought, “Hey! If I'm teaching part-time, I can probably be happy as a full-time graphic designer,” and I started giving the matter some serious thought.

I needed a program that would allow me to take classes at night or on the weekend, and one that I could afford. There was a state university branch in my city, which would be convenient and affordable, but the programs available were uninspiring to liberal arts me. On the other hand, there was a private, Catholic university a couple of suburbs down the road that had some wonderful graduate programs tailor-made for liberal arts nuts like me, but the tuition would be higher than a state university. I found out that if I enrolled in a master’s program as a degree candidate and took the minimum for a full load (two classes per semester), I was eligible for a half-tuition scholarship, which meant I would only have to come up with about $1000 per semester. Still, that was $1000 I didn’t have.

I happened to mention my concerns about paying tuition to my boss, and she reminded me that one of our employee benefits was that that our employer would reimburse us for any credit course we completed, provided we had passed with at least a B grade. I knew about the policy – I had taken advantage of it when I took a graphic design course at the local junior college – but I had no idea it would cover courses that were not job-related. I guess someone on the benefits committee had heard that happy, well-rounded employees were more productive, and that continual learning helps people be happier (see my previous posts on this topic). Anyway, haroo-harray, I was soon taking an evening course in Literature in the Age of Enlightenment one evening per week, and another one on World Drama every second Saturday. And loving it! 

I had forgotten how much I had missed being a student. I was so excited about my new classes that I was getting up at 4:30 every morning to read things like Giambattista Vico’s New Science and Wole Soyinka’s The Bacchantes.  Forgotten corners of my brain were sparking for the first time in too long, and soon I realized that I’d actually been missing writing papers for classes and having the companionship of people who actually cared about great literature. My focus was definitely shifting away from the right-brain tasks of graphic design toward the more intellectual challenges of my coursework. I wasn’t yet ready to entertain the possibility of a complete change of life but, unbeknownst to me, that decision was just around the corner.

Ad astra per aspera, or prospering through adversity

I talked last time about the benefits of life-long learning, and learning as a kind of change for the better. One of the kinds of learning we all need to, and in fact do, engage in constantly is learning from experience. In fact, anyone who fails to learn from experience is going to keep repeating the the same mistakes, and is going to wind up miserable or dead.

In today's adulation of youth culture, it's easy to forget the truth of the old saying that "wisdom comes with age." Not because we automatically become wiser as we grow older (I've known my share of middle-aged or even elderly idiots), but because wisdom comes from experience, and experience accumulates over time. This is not to say that young people can't be wise in some ways, but anyone who is wise at twenty will be even wiser at forty, or at eighty. How do we become wise? By paying attention, learning carefully the lessons that experience -- our own or that of others -- can teach us. If you are a good learner, you'll soon find that you are wiser than your peers who may be navigating life on autopilot.

Keep in mind, though, that some of the most instructive experiences are those when we fail, or have to struggle with adversities that befall us by chance or even through the evil intentions of enemies. The title for this post, ad astra per aspera, is taken from the writings of Cicero, a Roman statesman who lived in the turbulent first century B. C. As  a young man, he wanted to be successful, and he carefully studied the means for achieving the kind of success that was most admired in his day, which happened to be political success. He rose to the top of the political ladder, and might have rested on his laurels afterward, except that his world was changing and the political scene became dominated by power-hungry men who were more interested in their own fame and wealth than the common good. Cicero saw that the tide of public life had turned and realized that politics was no longer the way to serve the common good, so he turned to philosophy (the pursuit of wisdom).

Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight (one of the best teachers), Cicero came to regret having chosen politics over philosophy in his youth, or maybe he just saw that it was time for a midlife career change. Anyway, ad astra per aspera ("to the stars through rough times") was a sentiment that accorded well with the Stoic philosophy he held dear -- don't let life's hardships get you down, find a way to learn (better yourself) from them. If you'd like to learn how one young man has already being learning this lesson, head on over to The Change Blog and read J. C. Deen's personal account, "How Extreme Focus Can Change Your Life."

My own life has provided plenty of uncomfortable situations from which I've learned. What about you? If you've ever benefited from the lesson's of experience -- your own or another's -- why not leave a comment and tell us about it?

The best way to avoid, or cope with, being thrown off the merry-go-round

Kate Duttro* made a great comment on Former Finnegan No. 3, and I thought I would reflect on it before going on with my personal tale. One of the best ways to arm yourself against the varied chances and changes of life is to keep on learning, as I have learned from my own experience.

Don't believe me? Well, consider this. If you have a job or pastime you like, keep learning to do it better. You'll become an indispensable asset to those you work with, and you won't be bored. Stay on top of new developments in your field, and you'll be ready for change when it catches up with you --  when a better position opens up, you'll be well-prepared to move into it. Or if your area of expertise is beginning to pall, start exploring related fields, and prepare yourself to make a lateral move.

If you are stuck in a routine job and can't see any immediate opportunities to move up or out, you can spend your leisure time learning something new, just to keep yourself from going crazy or perhaps to meet new people. Even if you stuck on the assembly line at the widget plant, you can become a cracker jack softball coach or salsa dancer or taxidermist or water rescue volunteer in your free time, and know that you are living a "value added" life, not just subsisting. And you won't make the dreadful mistake of identifying yourself by what you do for a living.

Another way to learn is to "re-purpose" something you already know. I ran across a woman on Facebook who is obviously a sympathetic soul and an avid crocheter. She became aware that cats with spinal injuries or leg deformities often develop friction sores from dragging their paralyzed rear legs; such animals often wind up in shelters but the unsightly sores frighten away prospective pet owners. This kind lady began crocheting little leggings for the kitties -- simple oblongs with yarn ties to secure them to the legs -- and found that they help protect the cats' legs and also appeal to prospective owner. Now she has a non-profit organization called "Leggings for Life" to help crippled cats. Take a look: 

I've read of other people who dealt with job loss either by promoting a hobby to a business (a stamp collector who opened his own online business after he lost his job) or learning to make a living in a related field when they couldn't find work in their own (a man laid off from a good job in network security who retrained as a locksmith and now installs and maintains home security systems). The fact is, such people succeed because they are able to shift gears without trauma, and they are able to do so because they are willing to learn.

My experience tells me that the happiest people are those who know how to learn, and have made a practice of doing so. When the ship of your life is wrecked, you'll have a better chance of survival if you've already learned how to get to the life boats, and don't cling to a sinking vessel. If the lifeboats are crowded, you'll be less likely to get tossed overboard if you know how to row, or can to learn to do so quickly ("fake it 'til you make it"). And if you've been shipwrecked before and have learned from the experience, you won't have to panic the next time it happens (you did learn to swim, didn't you?).

I once knew a motivational speaker who liked to say, "You're either growing or you're dying." Change is inevitable, but you should decide what kind of change it is -- do you want to grow, or do you want to stagnate, rust, rot, die? ("Gee, when you put it like that, Finnegan ...") If you are learning, you are growing, changing for the better, even if the knowledge you're gaining seems "useless" in your present circumstances.

*By the way, I looked Kate up after responding to her comment and found that she is a career change coach for academics, who has learned from her own personal experience as well as professional training. Check out her web site, Career Change for Academics.