I was lucky. I actually liked high school. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t exactly enamoured with sitting through Chemistry, Algebra and English Lit but, to me, that was only the half of it. I met friends for life and, with a huge emphasis on sports at my school, I managed to thrive in extracurricular activities that kept me out of trouble (for the most part) and gave me a great excuse for being out of the house evenings, toiling in much more important subjects such as football, basketball and track and field.
Hitting the books wasn’t my forte, although it wasn’t entirely my fault. When Typing and Woodshop are your prime electives, your chances of finding your professional calling through them — let alone garnering a modicum of interest and a decent grade — are pretty slim. Granted, my typing skills have helped out but I haven’t built a bookshelf since Grade 11.
With my dad out of our family picture, I dearly could have used an Auto Mechanics course to at least learn how to change my car’s oil, which I still peel bills out of my wallet at the local Jiffy Lube. My high school back in the late 1970s didn’t offer such a course and it certainly didn’t boast a class as intriguing and practical in the real world as Entrepreneurship, which my oldest daughter is taking at Port Coquitlam’s Archbishop Carney regional secondary school.
This is the same school that offers a course called Social Justice, which affords students in Grades 11 and 12 the opportunity to engage with and assist the homeless and less fortunate not only in our community, but also in hard-scrabble neighbourhoods of the Bronx, New York and Tijuana, Mexico. The course has since prompted graduating students to choose careers in social work, urban planning and teaching underprivileged youth.
I’m also fortunate in that both my children enjoy school and that they need not be prodded to hunker down at homework time and study for their own for exams. In part, they like high school for the same reasons I did — the friends and the extra-curricular merriment that comes with it — but they also get a kick out of getting good grades and feeling a sense of accomplishment for all their hard work.
Me? I managed to get by scholastically but spent much more time and energy learning a post-corner route in football than I did reading and deciphering the works of Shakespeare or perfecting the Pythagorean theorem. Eventually, I was saved when one of our English teachers offered Creative Writing when I entered Grade 12. I was engulfed by it and it and added credence to what I pretty much already knew — I would combine my love of sports and my relative writing proficiency to advance to college and pursue the career I proudly continue today.
It won’t get me rich but it’s a good gig. I remind my kids it’s important to choose a career they enjoy since they’re going to spend a good portion of their lives doing it, and financial and personal success will follow behind their passion for it.
Now, if only my school had both Auto Mechanics and Entrepreneurship. Who knows? With those two talents under my belt today, I could already be planning my retirement by operating my own Jiffy Lube instead of just writing about it.
Larry Pruner
6 September 2008
