I sat across from my English professor in her office, stunned.
I was a junior in college and struggling to write a paper. But my professor's editing advice pinpointed a larger psychological and emotional issue I was dealing with:
"You're too hesitant. You are so worried about getting it right that you hesitate to do anything at all."
In his TED Talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity?, Sir Ken Robinson explains how students (like me) develop this mindset.
"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. By the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this... we stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst things you can make. ... I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it."
Watching this TED Talk was the electric shock I needed to zap my mind out of its paralyzed state. Being an Education major at the time, it also got me thinking about the field of work I was heading towards. I started asking myself the question why I was interested in Education, and I came to the very problematic conclusion that I wasn't.
There are a few things I like about teaching, but the underlying motivation behind why I wanted to be a teacher was that someone else had told me that's what I wanted to be. I thought back to when I was a child and what I would say I wanted to be when I grew up - teacher was never the answer.
In his TEDx talk, How to Find and Do Work You Love, Scott Dinsmore speaks about how 80% of people don't like the work that they do, and that the majority of people in those jobs were in them because someone else told them they should be.
Dinsmore's quote from Warren Buffet that "Taking jobs to build up your resume is the same as saving up sex for old age," made me realize that I didn't want to spend my life stuck in a career that I didn't enjoy. His free online tools from http://liveyourlegend.net helped me start to work through the big questions of what I want out of life and how I'm going to get there.
Eventually I developed a project (which will remain a secret for now) I wanted to work on that I was excited about. Then I hit a new obstacle: authority. All the other great voices in the field I was interested in, all had master's degrees and PHD's and loads of expertise, experience, and respect for their work. I have none of these (nor the money to get there). I started to seriously doubt myself. After all, I was young, inexperienced, and only going to get my Bachelor's. Why should anybody listen to me?
In her TEDx talk, I'm 17, Kate Simonds answers that question. She argues that "Any idea should be respected, no matter the age of who it comes from," and advocates "A world of creative collaboration between adults and students."
Watching this TEDx talk made me realize that while I might have to fight harder to gain my respect for my project, I would also have the advantage of entering the field from a unique angle that could give me a competitive edge.
With all of this under my belt, I made the jump. I said goodbye to Education, switched my major, and graduated with a BA in English. Changing my major was one of the best decisions I ever made. I don't currently have a paying job in my field of interest, but I do have a job that I enjoy (more than teaching) that supports me while I work on my project.
