'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

Boys Just Wanna Have Fun

The news is that from about the age of eleven girls are producing better academic grades than boys. They seem more prepared to stay home and study in the evenings, and even on weekends. The more senior of their number are already taking over major posts in the legal, medical, retail, banking and real estate professions and there is concern that in the coming years, the young ladies will be netting all the ‘better jobs’ on leaving university.

You know what, so what? Things have changed since the eighties when it was girls who wanted fun. Now it’s the boys and although there must be many tragic stories of illiteracy and lack of mathematical skills involved in this mix, my concentration is on the guys who get fair grades but just don’t seem inclined to put in the extra time to place themselves on the ‘fast track’ jobs circuit. 

Ask yourself what you would like to be doing between the ages of eighteen and say forty, never ever forgetting that you will only ever get one shot at it. Shoot for one of the so described ‘better jobs’ and you will be placed in virtual workaholic slavery for at least the first ten years, if not the whole term. All you will get to see of the rest of the world is likely to be from hotel rooms, and by the time your fortieth birthday comes around you will certainly not be ‘street-wise’ and fresh for any challenge that life may throw at you, but someone who has been rigorously trained in a certain set way of doing things, and who by then may well be a burnt-out shell of the dynamic, fresh-eyed individual who once was.

There are some of us who have special talents, and such people will for their own pleasure spend more time developing those skills than the average person would. The more normal situation is far more likely to be that at the age of eighteen you don’t have a clue as to what you want to do in life but whatever it is that you do, you wanna have fun doing it, and can you blame you for that?

Obviously marriage and more specifically children can change perspective on these issues. The ‘nesting’ instincts of the young are instincts that the commercial institutions love to take advantage of, offering pensions and many other incentives to long term employees, in a world were no ‘long term’ employment exists. They want you to commit to ‘long term’ while they don’t. I have seen many couples avoid these Ceram-wrap employment packages, and bring up children while continuing to lead what I would term free and inquisitive lives, all the time expanding their knowledge of how the ‘real’ world works and their ability to deal with it. These people don’t stop reading books when the exams are over. They also have more time to go to educational, entertainment and sporting events and even time to take part in them.

The world is what you make it, but you can certainly make up targets too early on. You may later find out that you in fact were the target and by the time you have worked that out your true opportunities may be long gone.

There is of course a time when you need to make your mind up on certain key, career issues but let’s face it even at forty, you have twenty-five to thirty years still to offer. Plenty of time for a fresh-faced knowledgeable and no doubt personable individual to take out and pay off a mortgage and do all those steady job things, and how much better to be doing them at forty than at eighteen?

All I can say is that is how it has worked for me, but I am of a generation when it was cool to just pass; cool to do no more than was needed. Now, those smarts really impress.  

       

Mr. Benedict's Archives

Post Your