Study Prof

A few years ago I was getting my kitchen floor tiled, and a work crew was noisily but professionally scalping my kitchen floor.  As I watched the five men sweating through the work for hours on end, I struck up a conversation with the foreman.  From my own experiences working construction in high school, I knew that the foreman usually made two or three times what the laborers make, even though physically he did much less of the work. 

We talked for thirty minutes or so, and every couple of minutes he might call out to a worker directing them to adjust what they were doing or to be careful about a certain spot or to start the next step in the process.  The foreman was friendly and obviously well-respected by his crew, yet he didn't look any older than most of the laborers. 

"So how did you get into this?" I questioned.  "Is there some special tiling school you go to?"

"No," he replied.  "All of us started about the same time four or five years ago.  There were some experienced guys working at the time who showed us the ropes, but they've all moved on, and now I'm the foreman."

I thought to myself, "All these guys have the same amount of experience and are roughly the same age, yet this foreman is in charge and making two or three times as much; how does that work?"

I asked him, "I see you telling these guys what to do.  Who tells you what to do?"

He scratched his chin thoughtfully, shrugged, and said, "I do."

That made a real impression on me.  The difference between the boss and the laborers was not age or experience.  It was that the laborers were told what to do, and the boss took responsibility and did what had to be done without anyone telling him. 

Apply that to your work as a student.  You can sit around and wait for someone to tell you when and how to study or work on a project or get that paper published … that's the norm in high school … or you can take responsibility and tell yourself when to do those things.  People like that end up running things.  People who only do what their told–even if they do it very well–will always need someone to tell them what to do.

SO

If you want to be the boss, be your own boss.