I know I risk sounding like a shill here, but if you weren’t one of the 500 or so who attended the Arkansas Business 40 Under 40 luncheon a few weeks ago, you missed the kind of feel-good moments that can help balance out some of those feel-bad moments.
I was out of state during the 2015 event, so I had not previously watched the dozens of honorees each step to the lectern and answer one of four revealing questions. What a treat (and, miraculously, not overlong).
My favorite of the questions, although I might have worded it a bit differently, was “What do you wish you had known when you were 20 years young?” I think it’s an even better question for those of us who are (well) over 40, and I’ve found myself thinking about it from time to time since the luncheon in June.
I was still 20 when, on May 17, 1982, I took the journalism degree I had received from Harding University eight days earlier and started my first reporting job at the Pine Bluff Commercial. What I didn’t know then could fill a library.
For one thing, I didn’t know how to use a computer, which was not a big problem since it would be several more months before I had to learn. Reporters at the Commercial were still writing stories on special paper using IBM Selectric typewriters and scanning the text into the rudimentary computer system using a scanner roughly the size of a golf cart. (That may be a slight exaggeration.)
I was assigned to the education beat. At that time, Jefferson County was divided up among nine school districts, so I quickly learned a lot about school board meetings. But even though my father had been an administrator in the North Little Rock School District, I knew approximately nothing when I started. I remember distinctly that the first meeting I covered started with the declaration of a quorum, and a little thrill shot through me. I had no idea what a quorum was — wasn’t even sure how to spell it — but the school board had declared something and surely that was newsworthy! (My next beat was county government. By then I knew what a quorum was; I’m still not sure why a county’s governing body is called a quorum court.)
That first year was miserable for all the usual reasons that transition to the full-time workforce is hard, but after I got the hang of it, I realized that I was being paid to learn all kinds of things. And that was a blast.
So when I ask myself what I wish I had known when I was 20, I don’t wish I had known any specific fact. If I had known what a quorum was, I would have missed out on that little thrill and on the laugh I got when I looked it up in the dictionary when I got back to the newsroom. I would have missed out on one of my favorite memories of being so green that my first city editor, the late, great Joe Farmer, nicknamed me Sheena Innocence.
But here’s what I do wish I had known and what I would want every young adult to know: You need to play your own game. Don’t let the decisions others are making be more than data points in the mix when making your own decisions, because they aren’t working with the exact same factors.
This is such great advice in every part of life. Obviously, our personal decisions — marrying, starting a family, personal finance — shouldn’t be determined by what others are doing. (I say obviously, but for a lot of people it’s not obvious at all.) It’s also true in career decisions. Other people’s paths are just that — their paths.
You hear political candidates talking about running their own races. Has anyone ever run a less typical campaign than Donald Trump? (I’m not a fan, you understand, but I have to hand it to him for originality if not consistency.)
It’s great advice for businesses, too. The worst decisions I’ve seen businesses make are reactionary — either panicky responses or overly optimistic attempts at duplicating a competitor’s move.
The decision that is right for someone else is not necessarily right for you. What’s more, other people’s decisions may not even be right for them — or their families or their companies. Sometimes it’s hard to tell from the outside, so just keep playing your own game.
Tuesday of this week is my 17th anniversary as editor of Arkansas Business, and I’m still learning every single day. The 20-year-old me truly had no clue how young I was or how quickly time flies.
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Gwen Moritz is editor of Arkansas Business. Email her at GMoritz@ABPG.com. |