keep on plodding

I found myself wondering one day...is uni life for me more like a computer game, or a race?

As someone who once was on the road to becoming a hardcore, even professional gamer, I saw many similarities between uni life and computer games. Most people simply dive into computer games without thinking a whole lot, and just have fun while performing at a mediocre level, and the same can be said for uni. Uni is great fun, you meet lots of young, gorgeous and intelligent people who like the same things you do, and come out with a degree to boot.

But for hardcore gamers, a game is a discipline. They learn to understand the game, the rules, the mechanics, and practice them diligently so that they come out ahead of other people playing the same game. For me, uni has many similarities. Plenty of high scoring uni students do well because they've learned how to learn.

And I then compared it to a race. Cars, running, horseriding, whatever. How it was important in a race to find a perfect line, or a perfect pace, to make the absolute most of the muscle or horsepower you had to bear to get ahead of the other racers.

Instead of arguing with myself which of the two uni was more like, I decided to simply combine the two. Uni for me right now, is like a Racing Game. (More on that in future posts ;) )



How is this useful? For some decision making, this has proven to be very valuable to me. I recently pondered what career I would most love to do in the future. I laid out the things that I could never get bored doing, the things I would stay up late for, get up early for and risk ACT public transport for. This came down to: learning how to use computers to do everything, and teaching. Up until now, I thought that I would be in a career in IT, writing or designing software for some big firm making big money. And this idea is still compelling. But I also love teaching. Kids and adults alike, I love to be loved for my skills in teaching people to be their best in anything.

So instead of deciding between a career in IT or teaching, I decided to mash them together. I'd like to teach IT. And I feel really really good.



Let it be stressed that mashing is not the same as doing both things individually! I would most definitely not advocate deciding between a new TV or a new sound system, and just buying both. I simply advise that when an argument comes along or a decision needs to be made, think about how both sides can be mashed together in addition to thinking about each exclusively.