I don’t have much to add to the discussion of his life.  But, I have noticed that many people are watching, sharing, re-tweeting, etc. his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (embedded below).  It’s worth it – it is a concise, 3-story triptych that moves from birth, to learning love and loss, to death.  He tells it much like the way his Apple products are designed: his talk rings with clarity, it is elegant in its simplicity, it is different, it is important.

I was struck by his first story – about his birth, adoption and education.  His life was different from his first breath – as are the lives of all of us.  But, as an adoptee he had to recognize that fact – and possibly, in some part, that recognition may have led to his willingness to live differently.

One way that he actively chose to live differently was his “scary” decision to drop out of Reed College after 6 months.  By that point, he realized that he “had no idea what [he] wanted to do with [his] life, and no idea how college was going to help [him] figure it out.”  But upon dropping out,  he didn’t just do nothing.  Rather, the decision was a watershed moment that freed him to stop taking required classes that he wasn’t interested in – and to sit in on classes that he was interested in – and to start thinking about, learning and doing things that mattered to him. It wasn’t easy or romantic.  He scrounged for money, food and a place to sleep – while sitting in on classes that might have seemed frivolous and completely impractical at the time, like calligraphy.  He learned about fonts, proportional spacing, and the making of great typography – all of which years later became a cornerstone of the very first Macs.

The story is not about choosing whether or not to go to college; at any given time, college may or may not be right for any given individual.  Rather, the story is about developing and gaining trust in yourself.  He calls it ‘connecting the dots.’  As you grow and change, you can’t know where all the dots of your life may lead in the future.  It’s about being willing to trust in something within yourself, “your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever,” and developing the belief that you can find things you care about and that you can pursue those things .  He believed that having the self-trust that the dots will connect and make sense when you look back on your life will “give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path… and that will make all the difference.”

Some key bits:

College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments… Today’s graduates are also told to find their passion and then pursue their dreams. The implication is that they should find themselves first and then go off and live their quest. But, of course, very few people at age 22 or 24 can take an inward journey and come out having discovered a developed self…  Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life…  Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.

Click here to read the whole thing.  It’s some tough medicine – but definitely worth a read whether you’re in school or have a son or daughter there.

Suspended in Time

Sometimes, as you approach a beginning, it’s appropriate to start at the end.  The Class of 2011 “graduated” last June.  We tend to think of a graduation as an abrupt and final step, distinct from what came before or what comes after.  But is that right?

The word “graduated” can mean – divided into intervals or to change gradually.  An “interval” is the time or space between two moments or states.

Through this lens graduation is less of an event than an interval connecting one important part of your life to another.  Like the mortarboards suspended in time in the picture above, graduation is a waypoint where things are momentarily at rest, a time of equilibrium and introspection where, in the blink of eye we can scan back and forward to the fleeting images of all the classes, stories, laughter, tears, games and songs that came before and to the journey that lies ahead.

It’s not so different with these last few moments before the first day of school begins.  With the warmth of summer at our backs, who knows what stories new sixth graders may write for themselves this year, or what plans the rising seniors will craft for themselves and their time after graduation, or the potential that awaits all the other students and families as the 2011-2012 school year opens.

With last year in the rear view mirror and the new year on the horizon, take advantage of this quiet interval to watch the performance of Joe Pug’s Hymn 101 by Kevin Messinger and Nora Schlang at last summer’s graduation.  Performed in a sanctuary, the song appropriately is a prayer to the actions and hopes that trailed the graduates as they walked in and those that awaited them as they left.  Or, in other words, as Kevin says in his introduction, the song’s about “movin’ around… and finding yourself…”

Thanks to Mike and Amanda Messinger for the video (Amanda makes a cameo vocal appearance!).

More graduation pics at BurkePix – click here!

Tim Harford, aka The Undercover Economist, thinks that we can often succeed by failing productively.  Take a look at his short (and very cool) video below about the importance of understanding failure in order to better understand success.  He runs through three keys to failing successfully.

By looking at “failure” from a different perspective, he redefines what it means to “make” a mistake.  In other words, some mistakes, whether in science, or education or life, are the result of trying and are in a sense intentional.  In this light, the trick is not to avoid or discourage the making of mistakes.  Rather, the magic of learning is to be open to and encourage the making of those mistakes that you have prepared for and that you are willing to analyze before making the next assault.

Btw – Harford’s new book, Adapt, covers the waterfront of how to go about making mistakes.

Marketing guru, Seth Godin advises that in most things you don’t need to wait to be picked – you should pick yourself.  In his recent blog post, Reject the Tyranny of Being Picked: Pick Yourself, he writes:

It’s a cultural instinct to wait to get picked. To seek out the permission and authority that comes from a publisher or talk show host or even a blogger saying, “I pick you.” Once you reject that impulse and realize that no one is going to select you–that Prince Charming has chosen another house–then you can actually get to work.

No one picked the Friday song girl...

He cites Amanda Hocking who made a million dollars putting out her own Kindle book with no publisher and Rebecca Black who reached more than 15,000,000 listeners (for good or bad) without a record label.

Is it that important that we get picked by the school; should it be heartbreaking to not get picked by a particular college?  Or is there another way to approach the next step after high school?

Seth Godin

Borrowing from Godin, if you’re relying on that one perfect school to pick you, it may be a long wait. On the other hand, once you understand that there are problems just waiting to be solved, once you realize that you have and can get all the tools and all the permission you need, then opportunities to contribute abound.

In other (Godin) words, you don’t need someone to pick you. Pick yourself.

H/T – to my bro-in-law, Dana.

Is learning a natural state of being for people young and old?  Don’t people naturally crave new information?  Do people, especially adolescents, like to gather and share information socially (Exhibit A: Facebook)?  If so, then why are too many high schools across America the home of disaffected, bored and failing students?

Maybe it’s because so many school environments are built and run in direct opposition to the way that high school students are naturally wired to learn.  And maybe there’s a better way.  Maybe its time for schools to try a form of education which is more in line with high schools students’ natural inclinations to want more responsibility over their lives, to have more ownership over what and how they learn, and to learn from and teach their peers.

Susan Engel’s recent NY Times op ed, Let Kids Rule The School tells the story of a “group of eight public high school students, aged 15 to 17, in western Massachusetts as they designed and ran their own school within a school. They represented the usual range: two were close to dropping out before they started the project, while others were honors students. They named their school the Independent Project.”

As part of the Independent Project, the students took responsibility over their own education.  They created their own curriculum.  With the help of advisers and teachers they assigned and answered questions about the physical and social world around them.  They chose and read 8 great novels in 8 weeks.  There were no grades, but the students monitored and evaluated each others’ work.  Wherever possible they taught one another. “One student who had failed all of his previous math courses spent three weeks teaching the others about probability.”

During the semester, each of the students also took on an individual project, learning how to play the piano or cook, or making a podcast about domestic violence.  At the end of the term, they each performed their new skill in front of the entire school.

The last part of their self-assigned curriculum was to do a ‘collective project’ that had social significance.  Because this new learning experience had been so transformative, they decided to produce a film showing other students how to start and run their own schools.

[The students' stories are] remarkable because they demonstrate the kinds of learning and personal growth that are possible when teenagers feel ownership of their high school experience, when they learn things that matter to them and when they learn together. In such a setting, school capitalizes on rather than thwarts the intensity and engagement that teenagers usually reserve for sports, protest or friendship.

Here’s the punchline of the article, wisely delivered by one of the students: “I did well before. But I had forgotten what I actually like doing.”

The state of education in America is in a sad place right now.  But maybe it’s because too many schools are unnecessarily fighting the natural order of things.  By micromanaging students, bombarding them with standardized tests, and compelling them to memorize what’s necessary to do well on those tests, some schools are causing kids to forget what they otherwise might actually like doing,   Maybe the answer lies right under our noses, i.e., within the very students that we so much want to grow up to be people that can learn and teach on their own as they grow.  It happens at Burke – come check it out.

H/T – Mike Messinger and Wanda.

Whether you’re a junior or a senior, a student or a parent, now’s as good a time as any, while on your journey to Mordor, to take a breath and a seat and read Andrew Ferguson’s Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College.  The book recounts Ferguson’s story about “helping” his son navigate the college application gauntlet.  Turns out that the story is far closer to Planes, Trains & Automobiles than it is to reading US News 100 Best Colleges. And filled with more laughs and truths to boot.

You can check out a great interview with Ferguson at Inside Higher Ed. In another interview in Splice, Ferguson unlocks the hidden, secret key to to the college process when talking about what he’s learned as he now goes through the process a second time with his daughter. This time he is far more relaxed because he knows how the drama ends:

“She’ll get in somewhere! And if she gets in, if she’s meant to be happy, it won’t matter a great deal which school she gets into. This is one of the dirty but happy secrets of college admissions in America.

For another realistic intro to the college process, high school families are invited to attend Burke’s College Night this Wednesday, 3/16 at 7pm in the Theater.  Jay and Danny, along with folks from Johns Hopkins, Howard, GW, St. Marys, Ohio State and others will be there to help get you started on your trek on the right foot.

Postscript for parents: Ferguson reminds parents of one of the most happy/sad things that fed his dyspepsia, which crystallized the day his son got into college:

He was delighted and I was delighted for him. The mixed feelings were summed up by my wife when we got ready for bed that night. She said the wonderful thing is—he’s going to college; and the terrible thing is—oh no!—he’s going to college! It’s the parental experience in concentrated form. We spend our lives preparing the people we can’t live without to live without us.

This is what the author wrote, “At last year’s International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, students at Edmund Burke presented a range of co-curricular projects. In one math class, high school students conducted a statistical analysis of slavery today. One student recited a poem on the theme of human bondage. Another produced a DVD of digital images featuring women and children enslaved around the world. Others created pamphlets and handed them out on the streets of Washington, D.C., to educate passersby to the suffering of 21st century slaves.

Click Here to read the article.

Check out our blog post on Abolition Day at Burke.