NORTHERN PLANNER

I had two very different chats about the same thing this week.

The first one was with a planner. He was describing all the things he did before planning – manual labourer and academic to name but two. He swears blind it makes him better at his job since it’s given him a much more rounded view of what life is REALLY like – and much more thankful to do what he loves now.

The other one was a joiner, who used to be a chef. He’s now decided on teaching and if you could see the joy at finding what he really wants to do, you’d know he was doing the right thing. Living a little, not having gone straight into teaching without living some real life will make him that much better at it.

Compare that with some of the marketing graduates on work experience you may have met. You know, the ones that think they know it all thanks to studying a bit of theory that only works in books, but never really seen how REAL people carry out their lives.

Some perspective.

Now I’m all for learning for learning’s sake, I truly think academic achievement is a must, but that needs to be enriched with the experience of doing something else too. Struggling a bit, failing a few times and, well just LIVING are very helpful for being a great planner, or anything else for that matter.

For my part, I learned as much from collecting glasses in a night club as I did from studying politics when I was at university. When you have to humour smashed revellers and tiptoe around steroid pumped bouncers, you learn one or two about diplomacy and the ugly side of human nature. You also learn never to wear shorts in a club, no matter how hot it is, or how hard you’re working.

I’ve been a gymn instructor, dole layabout, nursing home carer and telesales slave even before I failed at account handling. If nothing else, it showed me the everyday bravery and grace of people living out their daily struggle, and how insignificant all this marketing doodah really is. I wonder if more people could do with a bit of that too.