Shortcomings

I don't know if you've noticed this, but people are generally proud of their accomplishments in life. This--probably--is the reason I have a cork-board in my room with ribbons and a bookshelf with plaques and trophies. If, in the future, I get an opportunity to through-hike the PCT or earn a graduate degree, I'm sure I'll be proud of those accomplishments too.

However, the weirder and more eclectic side of people is that they are also very proud of their shortcomings.

Part of this could be misplaced optimism, or maybe the educational system forgot to instruct its pupils to use the slow-lane if a brighter bulb is trying to pass on the left. In any case, I see this kind of thing all the time. People who are proud of their obnoxiousness, proud of their ignorance, proud of their stinginess.

In my case, it might be a case of not wanting to feel like a failure. As most of you know, I'm going to drop out of the Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate program at Purdue. The thing is, I seem almost to be ridiculously proud of this epic demonstration of academic incompetency. Some of the things I tell myself are...

"Those career academic types don't connect with real-life."

"The educational system is corrupt and work experience is where it's at."

"I didn't want an M.S. degree anyway. Buying a house and getting married should be my priorities."

For some reason, the thought never occurred to me that perhaps... just perhaps... I make a lousy electrical engineer. Maybe... just maybe... I'm not smart enough to learn the requisite math for the degree. Possibly... just possibly... I don't have the self-discipline to pull something like this off.

Wait. People have shortcomings? Horrors.

It seems that entrepreneurs understand what most of us don't. Failure is good. Why? Because it shows us--in a rather brutal and unforgiving way--what works and what doesn't work. If an entrepreneur fails in a business enterprise, they dust themselves off and try again, and--chances are--will do better, or at least not fail in the same way.

Shortcomings lead to failures. Ergo, shortcomings are good.

So, while I'm not exactly tickled over losing so much money in this grad school enterprise, it's probably a good and healthy thing for me to experience.

We homeschoolers can thump our collective chests as much as we want, but I fear that we fall into the same trap as our public school peers. Namely, the assumption that failure is bad and should never be acknowledged as such (even when we do fail). Ergo, we can't learn from our mistakes.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have about six months of soul searching I need to do. Time to reevaluate and try again with a better understanding of shortcomings and failure.

Until next time,
- Daniel