The problem with advice is that even when it's good advice, you only know so in retrospect. Often you can't take it in at the time you're receiving it. I advise people all the time, and my advice is rarely taken. I accept that. We all make our choices.
At the shower yesterday, we all made a book of advice for the tiny human. I'd asked each person to bring a photo of herself as a young kid to put into a memory book with some piece of advice that she wished she had received while she was growing up. Until I received a photo and a [piece of advice for the book from Shanelah's mother-in-law (who wasn't able to attend), I didn't realize how much the advice people submitted was going to be about them personally.
I brought these two photos:
When I was a junior in college and the end of the first semester was approaching, I was considering dropping out of the School of Education because I didn't want to be a teacher. At that time one could get a teaching degree as part of the BA, and I was carrying a major, a minor, and then this minor-plus education course load (this was going to result in my having two electives in my four years of college). I was student teaching at schools unlike the small ones I'd attended with other academically-focused students, and I hated it. Of course I was freaking out about it, because I'd wanted to be a teacher for so long, and I had no idea what I would do if I didn't become a teacher.
I was talking about it with my academic advisor, and she gave me the best advice ever - which of course I could not absorb at the time, though I remember it word-for-word. The Killer Lady was teasing me yesterday by telling some of the other guests that now that I have the message, I do my best to spread it. I compared it to the zealotry of the converted. This is what I wrote in the book for the tiny human:
No decision you make is the only decision
you get to make about any particular thing.
It is okay to change your mind.
1 comment:
Those are great pieces of advice. Sometimes I feel that when I make a decision that I my view can never be but reading your blog this morning reminds me that I can.(I mean who says I can't right?) That I can change my mind! Great blog entry. I'll keep those pieces of wisdom close to me today.
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