I've been thinking a lot about a previous post on dropping out of college. That post struck a chord with my readers so I thought I'd take that conversation further. I quoted David Brooks who argued that college costs are not the issue driving dropouts, but lack of self-discipline, problems at home, lack of academic preparation or emotional disengagement. I 'fessed up and commented that I'd been "kicked out" of college after my first year for both social and academic reasons, but that the real issues were problems at home and lack of self-discipline.
However, there are a few things right about dropping out of college--especially if you go back and finish. One year of dirty factory work in Detroit, along with several other experiences, had a lot to do with the clarity I gained, clarity that sent me right back to college.
I worked for the Ex-Cell-O Corporation, a firm that manufactured precision parts for Pratt Whitney jet plane engines where I spent the entire year in a division that "finished" the parts. I learned that I was very good at precision work and so was regularly shifted around to different jobs. It was made clear to me after about six months that if I was interested, long-term opportunities were available. The wages were excellent and anyone today would say that the additional benefits were, well. . . unbelievably good. Surprisingly, that year enabled me to come to grips with a number of important career issues that as the result of much recent research have clarified what was going on in my life at that time and why I was able to leverage it successfully.
It's the knowing you get from doing
I decided rather quickly that in spite of the opportunities, the world of manufacturing was not for me--a decision that would not have been as clear without the year off. I didn't "fit" the factory and over the long term it would have been very frustrating. The experience affirmed what research tells us about adult learning. The kind of knowledge we need to make real change in our lives is not textbook learning, but implicit. It's knowledge that Herminia Ibarra calls the knowing you get from doing. So, we can only come to career change as a result of actual involvement in a specific context whether the factory, the marketing group or even the medical practice. Planning a career won't do it for a huge majority of us. Instead, we need experience in a field or two. I have since found it intriguing to realize that a great number of physicians never practice medicine--but instead decide in their last year of medical school or during their residence that that world is not for them. The same is true for lawyers. That's the knowing you get from doing. But in developing our career we take baby steps and learn from those steps until career patterns begin to take shape.
In addition, that brief episode of manufacturing success gave me the confidence to recognize that there were careers out there in which I could succeed. How did this happen?
Success is about hard work, not talent
What I found was that if I put a great deal of effort and discipline into my factory work I could succeed. Although there were some failures in that setting, there was always a supervisor or foreman around to intervene and coach me through the issue. The result was that I developed a different attitude toward failure. Today I say that my success was not about innate gift, but about working my ass off and accessing help. Recently, I related my experience to Carol Dweck who smiled over the phone at my early learning, reminding me that Robert Sternberg, the cognitive psychologist, had gone through a similar experience. Dweck's research concludes that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with exercise. And though I was merely flirting with that notion at the time, it was reinforced in my experience of college, graduate school and business. One potential C-client at a major American corporation commented that I was old enough to have had a few significant failures and so he'd like to work with me. I chuckled at his smarts, as well as his ignorance of my life.
Go for the small wins, not the big success
My factory supervisors were very effective at teaching by the process of what today we call "small wins." And though one "leader" swore like a sailor, told more dirty jokes than 50 factory toughs, and teased me mercilessly, he also sat with me until I'd learned a new task, then came back and watched throughout the day, giving me feedback as needed and letting me know when the work was performed perfectly. Furthermore, my coach was not an advice-giver, but taught with very specific, concrete, descriptive statements. Nothing he said was open to ambiguity. It was always this "f----ing" part or that "damned" ball bearing. Inevitably, a couple weeks later he always seemed to have a still more difficult task for me. I was easily bored, so in spite of his ways, I appreciated the new opportunities. Today's research on learning confirms the lesson of small wins that I learned from that "teacher." In short, don't even waste your time on huge gains, take it step by baby step.
Manage your sexual priorities
I also came to grips with my interest in the opposite sex during that year. Though I dated a lot of interesting females at the time, I watched some of the younger factory workers essentially condemn themselves to a very narrow future because they got involved and got married and started having babies far too young in life (the order may have been reversed). Early on, I realized that if I really intended to achieve in a professional career, I'd need to keep my focus on career, manage my testosterone (this was before the pill, much less other stuff), put aside money for college and stay focused on my ultimate goals. My dad was helpful with that issue, and on one occasion told me that if I intended to finish college and become a professional I'd need to "keep my zipper zipped."
Today I understand that that decision was right, but for the wrong reason. It was completely based on bias: what's called the availability heuristic. The availability of experiences in the lives of other young men evoked my emotions by their vivid, easily imagined and specific consequences and drove my decision. I had no background or training in decision making and the simple process of even assessing pros and cons of a relationship was well beyond my radar screen.
Perseverance is about "ignition"
Although I've mused over two other drivers of my return to college and the resulting perseverance, I never fully understood their power until just recently. I grew up with music and was richly exposed to every type including opera--which I loved, because I was a singer. During the summer following high school graduation, I was given a ticket to a concert of Eileen Farrell and the Detroit Symphony. It's been nearly sixty years, but I remember sitting in the balcony, listening to Wagner's Liebestod and waiting patiently through the long introduction for her to slowly rise and sing. No mike, seemingly no effort and her magnificent voice soared over the orchestra's triple forte, lavish, voluminous and brilliant. I was shocked and speechless, unaware, in spite of all my experiences with music, that the human voice could do that.
The second experience was a long exposure to a leading Detroit pastor and preacher who in a very quiet way was one of the most respected and capable men in the city. As a high schooler, I listened critically to his words and process, reflecting on their power and his rich impact over the lives of thousands of people.
Both of these experiences ignited a deep passion and awakening that created my identity and led me to say that is who I want to be. It took college and seminary to figure out which of them was to form the basis of my career. Meantime, I was studying both music and preaching, working and practicing to trace the invisible signals that would motivate me for the rest of my life. It's the recent research of Gary McPherson's study of musicians at the University of Illinois, and John Bargh's studies at Yale that explain the role of these two seminal experiences. Daniel Coyle describes their impact upon commitment and perseverance with his metaphor of ignition. He writes that "ignition and deep practice work together to produce skill in exactly the same way that a gas tank combines with an engine to produce velocity in an automobile. Ignition supplies the energy, while deep practice translates that energy over time into forward progess."
Dropping out of college can be the right experience for you. Use it wisely.