Just shut your mouth, and listen
I intentionally didn’t work as hard as I could have during my final year of university. I intentionally put a specific amount of effort in to get the grade I was confident I could get. I intentionally put more energy in to freelancing than I did my studies.
And my aim was to gain experience and graduate with a 2:1.
I was confident, so I took a risk.
By July it had paid off. Happy days.
But the reason I was happy to take the risk was because I don’t really rate education. Too many people rely on it to get them a job straight out of university. Life doesn’t work like that.
It’s true, of course, that you’ll learn more from education than you will sitting at home watching Netflix.
But you’ll learn more from work experience in a relevant organisation — or from having the audacity to work for yourself — than you ever will in a lecture theatre.
However if you really want to learn, if you really want to grow, then you talk to people. You care about people. You shut your mouth and you open your ears.
People, all of those bodies sharing the planet with you, are the real learning opportunities.
That means there are billions of chances to learn. Billions of chances to take a different path. Billions of chances to see life in a new way.
All you need to do is shut your mouth, and listen.
