Was I Born On Mars Or Was Everyone Else?!

This summer we had an intern working at Aquascape that was exceptional. When it was time for her to go back to school to pursue her degree at a local community college we were sad to see her go. She had become such a valuable asset for our team we offered her something we hadn’t been motivated to do before.

We were happy to allow her to continue working here in between her classes. We flexed our work schedule to meet hers. When you do good work, good things happen. Funny how that happens huh?!

If that was all that happened though I wouldn’t be talking about it. Today I saw her in the lunch room and was excited to hear how she was enjoying her now second year of college. However my enthusiasm to hear how good things were going for her, wasn’t met with an equal level of passion by her regarding her experiences.

What?! This is college! It should be the time of your life right?! Surely she knows that?! Maybe she never watched Animal House though and doesn’t realize that?! I needed to get to the bottom of this problem pronto and talk some sense into her!

I asked her “why the lack of enthusiasm kid?” Her reply was telling. This semester I have all required classes. Left unsaid verbally but so apparent otherwise was how unfulfilling she found them. However her eyes light up when she said “next semester I have all classes in my major!”How sad.

Here we find a diamond in the rough, a young, talented hard working kid who comes into the game and is instantly contributing. We only get her services part time though as she is pursuing a dream to someday land a job doing what she’s doing now for us.

This is not my typical rant about how ridiculously over-valued (and over-expensive) today’s college degrees so often are, but rather this:

In this day and age, why is anyone forced to do anything generic just to “earn” something that is supposed to open doors for them to do something they want, and in this case actually are doing?

My point is this. We all have to do things in life we don’t want to do in order to get something else we do want. Agreed? That’s about as much merit as I can give to the craziness of seeing the light snuffed out in a talented and passionate mover and shaker who is forced to do something for no other reason than that’s what society deems you should be doing.

Pure silliness if you ask me (or have read this far).