Out of all my 8+ years of education, I have had some of the hardest and meanest teachers but there is one teacher that I am still trying to understand every single day: it's the real world. For the past four years, the real world has given me tests after tests and my score definitely is not great like some of my grades in college; I would say my the tests given to me by life so far has been the average grade of a C and D. I struggled so much to learn and try to understand what she is teaching me because in the real world, there is no such thing as lecture. You are given the tests before the lessons, and it expects to you self-learned most of the time and if you fail to get the lessons, life will bring endless miseries your way which we can call it "consequences;" these consequences are not stressed-free; they are very stressful and might cause insomnia over night and numerous bout of rage. There is no shortcut to learning many of the lessons: you just have to roll your sleeves up, dive in, and try to study it as you go and pray that you will get it.
Despite the negatives that come from learning from the real world, there are many great lessons you can learn from it. Here are a few lessons you can learn:
1. How to think for yourself. People can smell if you can think for yourself from afar. Adults do not like people who cannot think for themselves and life do not give pardon to those who always depends on people to think for them. You have to master this skill in order to succeed in any part of life--whether it's in your personal or professional relationships.
2. How to stand up for yourself. This is one of the hardest lesson I learned over the past four years and the more I practice, the better I am at it. Standing up for yourself requires that you know yourself and you are aware of your surrounding.
3. How to fake confidence. Sometimes, we don't have any confidence; sometimes, we feel so shitty inside that we just want to hide in a cave forever and not have to come out. But hiding will not do any good and in the real world, it's not possible. So what do you do? You fake it until you become what you want to be.
4. How to manage time. New college grads who have close to zero working experience will have the hardest time getting this. It takes practice and it is definitely trial-and-error as you learn it.
5. How to solve problems. School teaches us how to do test problems that have one answers which the teacher wants but in the real world, there is no one answer that fixes any problem. There are multiple answers that can solve a problem and you have to use your best judgement to resolve the problems.
6. How to deal with conflicts. No one like conflicts, we shun away from them like a deadly cancer but sometimes it's completely impossible to avoid it. You just have to learn how to deal with it as you go. Overtime, we learn how to deal with conflicts accordingly.
7. How to deal with people. There are so many personalities out there and we have to adapt to each one as we continue on whatever journey we are in life. It's hard because we might not be able to click with or know how to deal with certain person.
In conclusion, the real world can be a pain as a teacher but it can teach us and bring us far in life than we ever anticipate. Give yourself patience if you are struggling to understand what the real world is trying to tell you because you will get it. Our brain is wired to solve and to understand what we need to learn and it will get it eventually.
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