It's Time To Know Kung Fu
At the end of the year, assuming all goes well, I’ll finally be finishing college. I started almost a decade ago, all the way back in Fall 2014, bowed out for a while in the middle, and am now back to finish this thing and move on. At first, I wasn’t sure if I would ever finish college. It wasn’t something I was passionate about finishing. I despised a lot of school growing up, despite having the best setting (and the best teacher) that I could possibly hope for. I was homeschooled, got to learn things that I probably wouldn’t have learned in public school, and so much of my academic future was on my mom’s shoulders as she taught me and graded my work.
I went to college because that’s what ‘everyone else did’. I didn’t have crazy ambition, nor did I ever want to shoot for a Master’s. During the first couple of my semesters, I was adrift. I took my classes, tried to pass them, and failed a few or had to drop out. Eventually, I started only taking one class per semester to focus on finding full-time work. My focus turned completely towards moving out of my parents’ house, landing a full-time job, and setting up a future for Kay and I.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but one thing that I’ve been really grappling with over the last week is that—no matter how old I get—school is just not for me.
It wasn’t really for me growing up, and it’s not really for me in college. I recently looked back at all the classes I’ve taken over the last decade, and I noticed a predictable pattern. All the classes I took that were linked to writing in any way—especially where I was given a lot of freedom in my essays—landed passing grades. I even succeeded in a couple classes with flying colors.
So, I know what I’m good at.
The other classes unrelated to writing—especially the ones that are far and away from the subject—aren’t quite on a level of success. I walked away from the records feeling discouraged. Is writing and video editing really my only skills? Do my existing hyper-focused skills prevent me from being able to learn anything new? Am I not good at anything else? Do I have no other skills beyond what I can do behind a computer?
I’m still going to finish my degree by the end of the year and I will pass, and I will work hard to get there. The reason why I bring up my academia woes is because it has given me an awareness of the importance of learning new things. A common struggle for people on the autism spectrum is that we can feel so lax in our comfort zones that we’re even more resistant to new things than the typical person. This might sound lazy, but sometimes I wish we had the ability to just plug ourselves into a matrix, and a machine can ‘insert’ the knowledge of what we’re curious about into us.
In my case, I can be resistant, or my schedule is so filled up with the things I already enjoy doing that it leaves very little room for much else. In this time where I only have a few months at my job left (I and everyone else were laid off, in case this is the first post of mine you’re reading!), I’ve found that one of the best ways to move up in the workforce is to acquire new skills and learn as much as I can to boost my credentials and diversify what I’m capable of. Because of my situation, I can’t be too scared of the unknown. I have to be willing to set time aside to learn new things, gain more skills, or even build on the ones I already have. I’m blessed that I have time on my side. Now I just need to spend it wisely.
What about you? What kind of new skills have you gained lately? Have you learned anything new that is now a significant part of your life? Let me know in the comments section below and I’ll see you next week!
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