Wisdom I Didn’t Follow
But wish you would.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received came from a former pastor’s wife, Marie Gordon.
I was 18, in my senior year, and she told me to write essays to win scholarships for college.
I didn’t listen.
I believed two lies that kept me from following her advice:
1. I thought everyone else was a better writer than me.
2. I assumed so many people were applying, that the odds would be against me, a million to one.I was wrong.
I know that I was wrong about #1 because I’ve taught writing to middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students. Most writing is average or below. I’d wager that writing skills are trending lower and lower these days.
So you should write because chances are that with a little hard work and practice, your writing would stand out from the mediocrity. The principle is that we tend to overestimate natural talent. We assume success is a result of talent, when it is actually a product of a disciplined work ethic. This principle can be applied to almost any skill. Interested in art? Fitness? Business? Education? How many “naturally talented” people are simply out-worked by people who put in consistent work?
My second assumption was also wrong. I framed the odds of winning a scholarship like I understood the chances of winning the lottery–statistically improbably. But whereas millions of people do enter the lottery, millions do not necessarily apply for the exact same scholarship. Entering the lottery has a cost threshold of a few dollars. But filling out a scholarship application, writing a personal essay, or reading a required book (or learning any other skill) for a scholarship is a harder threshold requiring focused, coherent effort. Many people will apply. But not as many as to make it impossible.
The application process is a gateway, and entry has a cost. While the cost may be low in some cases, I suspect it is often high enough to discourage many people (like my 18-year-old-self). And even if others pay that toll, they are not necessarily more qualified than I might have been—the cost sorts people by motivation and the task itself sorts people by merit. Even if there had been hundreds or thousands of other applicants, being judged by merit, by hard work and passion can even the playing field.
Because I viewed acquiring a scholarship more like a game of chance than a contest of skill and will, the cost threshold sorted me out, and made it that much easier for the other applicants.
I did almost take Marie’s advice. I don’t recall where I acquired a list of scholarships, maybe the school counselor, but I did look at the options available at that time (now the internet has greatly expanded the access to opportunities of this sort). Some scholarships were looking for people who fit into a certain demographic. But many others were based on pre-requisites or tasks like learning a skill (e.g. knitting or interest in entrepreneurship), because people with money often donate it to others who will take time to learn about something they value. The one I remember considering most seriously required reading the book Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand and writing an essay answering a prompt. I nearly tried. But because of my incorrect assumptions, I gave up before beginning. (Also, Atlas Shrugged is lengthy and daunting, though ironically, I read it by choice only a few years later.)
It is easy to disqualify oneself. But a life lived in disqualification becomes harder and harder because the unanswerable question, “what if,” becomes more bitter with age. Life rewards work over talent. Destinations never sought are never reached.
Most practically though, my biggest mistake was not having this presumptions, but keeping them to myself. The wisdom of age relies upon years of experience. The wisdom of youth lies in seeking out elders with such experience. Maybe the first step on the path is not starting to work, but asking a question?
Find someone further along the path, and ask them what they would do in your position.