I Was the Master Student Before I Was a Master’s Student

Doing well in school is valuable, but it’s second to doing well in life.

I always ask parents: Why do you want your kid to be good at school? The answer is almost always some version of, “So they get good grades.” But grades are meaningless unless you know how to apply the skills behind them in real life.

Take arithmetic for example. You use it every day; Calculating change at the grocery store, figuring out the cost of what’s in your cart, reading an analog clock, working out how much time you have left to get something finished. Skills like that, done with fluency, make your actual life better. That’s the test that matters.

Again, the point isn't that school doesn't matter. It's that school is only as valuable as your ability to apply what you learned there in real life. Life is the actual teacher and the test. School can help you learn the skills to do better on that test.

When I say I was the master student before I was a master’s student, I mean it literally. I’ve always treated life itself as my classroom. That’s how you learn from your mistakes. That’s how you learn what to do, and what not to do. Life will teach you if you pay attention. Walk through it with your eyes closed, metaphorically, and none of that learning gets through.

I know that’s easier said than done. Paying attention, staying engaged, doing the hard thing consistently, that’s the actual work. Which raises real questions: How do you make sure you stay in that mindset?

How do you keep yourself in the position of being a student of life, not just a student of school?

-SL