So, there. I said it.
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Dear Students, Parents, and Board Members of the Wake County Public School System,
Congratulations.
Really, I mean it. Congratulations! Your announcement has once again given us an opportunity to chat about the current state of the formal education (and more) in the United States.
My name is Jay, and I’m one of the thousands of people who is all of a sudden interested in the Wake County Public School System.
Also, I’m an entrepreneur.
I’ve stomached article after article after article about your board’s decision to “not use class rank to designate a valedictorian or salutatorian” starting with the great class of 2019. And you know what accompanies those articles, right? The comments, of course! (There were some good ones.)
By the looks of things, I think it’s safe to state the obvious: you’ve caused quite a stir!
Ultimately, I’d like to address each party from a perspective that I haven’t found in any of the articles I’ve seen thus far: that of an entrepreneur. But first, I want to provide a little more context.
When I’m not entrepreneur-ing, I’m doing a couple other things that you might find interesting.
Shortly after graduating from college, I was invited by both my high school and university to join their national alumni boards. Naturally, I said YES.
In my “free” time, I work with a forward-thinking organization that helps students–and even teachers–develop a more entrepreneurial mindset.
I suppose you can say that I’ve got one eye on entrepreneurship and the other eye on academia. This explains why I’m sometimes cross-eyed and working through minor headaches, but I digress.
There’s something special I’d like to share with three of the parties who are directly affected by the decision to do away with recognizing valedictorians and salutatorians. Let’s get started.
To the students (especially the bad ones), you’ve got bigger fish to fry.
At worst, high school can be tough. At best, high school can be awkward.
You will have to work through many strange situations, emotions, and thoughts in the four years leading up to the event where people used to be acknowledged as valedictorians or salutatorians.
You will also have to sit through an English class or two (or three) where you’ll learn that my previous sentence would easily qualify as a run-on sentence.
There will be boys to deal with, girls to deal with, and dances to deal with.
You might get a pimple right before you take the photo for your yearbook. Maybe you’ll get caught smoking in the boys’ room. Or maybe you’ll get caught studying on a Friday night. Eek!
Here’s my point.
You will have experiences much more important in the long run than being hailed as valedictorian.
Now here’s the thing.
People will try to convince you that you’re going to be “soft” when you grow up. They’ll claim that you won’t be ready to face the cruel realities of “the real world” because everyone gets a trophy. They’ll call you wimps, babies, and pampered brats.
Hey, so what?
Every generation in the history of the world has said those things about the generations that followed them.
When people spout off at you about “the real world” and how you’re not prepared for it, feel free to tell them that Uncle Jay thinks they’re being silly. That should do the trick. If it doesn’t, then tell them this.
Each person lives in their own “real world.”
If you’re a rapper, then the rap scene is the real world to you. If you are a professional yo-yo master, then your yo-yo gang is the real world. If you become an investment banker on Wall Street, then that will be your real world. If you join the military right out of high school, then your world just reached a whole new level of real.
From an entrepreneur’s perspective, I encourage you to decide what your real world will be.
For me, my real world absolutely doesn’t care that I graduated at the very top of my class in both high school and college. (Didn’t see that one coming, eh?) What my world cares about most are the results I get now, not the accolades I won in the past.
Listen.
If academics are your strength, your thing, your life, then you’d better work your ass off to get the best grades you can. You owe it to yourself. The world absolutely needs academics. In other words, the world absolutely needs people like you.
If you’re anything less than a pure academic, trust me when I tell you that there’s a place for you too. There’s a difference between being a good at school and being a good learner.
Take my high school buddy Tony as an example.
He wasn’t good at school. He skipped class more than he probably should have. When he was in class, he didn’t really listen. He was thinking about other things that piqued his interest. He didn’t graduate towards the top of the class, and he didn’t win any academic awards.
But he was incredibly talented at many other things: yo-yo, Guitar Hero, skate boarding, flying helicopters, talking with girls, modeling, baseball, and rapping really fast.
In other words, he was a great learner.
Whatever your GPA at graduation, you’ll be stepping into a world increasingly run by entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs will be looking for people who can do more than memorize answers. They’ll want people who can solve problems.
Guys, try lots of things and do what you’re good at, and do your best to enjoy these four years.
They’ll fly by.
To the parents of the great classes of 2019 and beyond, trust yourselves.
A quick disclaimer here about being a parent: I’m not one.
I don’t know anything about parenting, and I anticipate feeling like I know less than what I thought I knew about parenting once I become an actual parent.
There’s no soap box appropriate for me to stand on here. I’ll tell a little story instead.
My mom cried when I told her that I had become an entrepreneur.
I remember it well. It was the first semester of my senior year in college. I was nervous to tell my mom. See, she’s a first-generation Asian-American mother. A tiger mom. And like most first-gen immigrants, she had come to the United States to create a better life for her and her family.
21 years before I called to tell her I was starting a business, she gave birth to me. Thus, she had effectively made me part of her family.
As part of her family, she wanted a better life for me. By that, I mean that she wanted me to become a doctor, lawyer, or other professional (or all three). That’s a common expectation from most parents, especially first-gen parents.
My housemates and I had gone through the trouble of covering our basement ceiling with flattened, empty Natural Lite boxes. Pictures of 70s rock bands and scantily clad women adorned the walls.
Amidst all of that, there I stood on the phone with my questioning mother.
Fast forward a couple years. She doesn’t understand my business, but she believes in it. She’s proud that I earned my diploma and other academic awards.
She trusts that she’s instilled me with the values it takes to be a good person.
And she trusts me.
As her child, her trust means more to me than 100 diplomas.
Lastly, to the Board, bravo.
Truly, bravo.
I’ve read the document that you unanimously approved. It was the best piece of writing I read about your decision.
It doesn’t appear as if you’re trying to give everyone a trophy.
It doesn’t seem as if you’re trying to tell everyone that there are no winners or losers.
And it doesn’t look as if you’re making this move to protect students’ feelings.
It does seem as if you’ve made a good, strong decision that will lead to many more proud parents and empowered students.
As you know, I see the world through the lens of an entrepreneur.
We see problems, and we create solutions. We build teams to help us do that. We collaborate. We work incredibly hard. We hunt down ways to increase our productivity, learn from experience, and do the best we can with what we’ve got.
Please take care of the kids who are better learners than students. And I’m almost begging you to do one more thing: allow your entrepreneurial kids to explore that too.
Although I’m not yet a world-class entrepreneur, I know a couple.
One thing they do 10 times better than any other living person is actually quite easy to grasp: they make decisive decisions, then adjust as they go.
I commend you for doing the same.
Sincerely,
An Entrepreneur
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Photo: Flickr/jinglejammer