You may have left the education system. But did the education system leave you?
One strange realisation as you get older: A lot of the behaviours you were punished for in school are rewarded in adulthood, and a lot of the behaviours you were rewarded for in school are punished in adulthood.
A large part of adulthood isn’t learning anything new; it’s just unlearning lessons from school, debugging the code the education system has written in your head—line by line, habit by habit, assumption by assumption.
Here’s a list of behaviours punished in school — but rewarded in adulthood:
1. Questioning the highest status person in the room – At school, it’s easy to see your teachers as gods that can’t be questioned. That’s the default assumption the school whispers to you: teachers are the highest-status people in the room. One of the biggest red pill moments comes in your early 20s. A person you know who is lost and confused says to you: “I’m unsure what to do with my life, so I’m going to become a teacher. It’s got great holidays!” You then do the mental maths: “What % of the teachers I put on pedestals at school were just lost people figuring things out?!”. And the same is true now: “What % of people I’m putting on pedestals now are just grown-up children figuring things out?”