Procrastination is my posse
Seventeen years ago I flunked university by working up a good speed for six years and then sliding out right at the other end. My funds had dried up and I decided it was time to go and do something else.
As it turned out my invisible diploma had a negative value on the job market. Even though there were plenty of jobs around, employers either thought I was over-qualified for having been to university or under-qualified for not having the piece of paper to prove it.
But I was lucky, because my experience working for the local student magazine was good enough to get me a job as a magazine editor and when I had had enough of that (for reasons that had little to do with this story and everything with the company I worked for) I slid out again, straight into a freelance career as a web developer.
And I discovered I was good at it.
Which was odd because I had never studied web development. To the contrary, putzing around on the web was something I did in my student years as a form of procrastination.
This brings me around to a great insight I gained after well over forty years, which is that I don’t learn well through rote learning, but the better through osmosis. Not that great an insight perhaps, but useful.
Another insight is that if it takes you forty years to realize you learn better through osmosis than through rote learning, maybe osmosis isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
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