Seems to me that study well and get a good job is exactly the same as don’t study bad and don’t get a bad job, and don’t stop studying and working, which is easy to say and easy to interpret; while be unique has some ‘emergent properties’.
Now… setting the clock for five minutes...
Encouraging someone to be agenty can be effectively done by putting them in charge of communal efforts. It’s not enough to bear some (heroic) responsibility yourself, you have to learn to nurture the tiniest sprouts of initiative of people around you. Even if they want to work in a newspaper.
Among other things, it teaches you to 1) never drop the ball, 2) recognize the vaguest idea as one that has potential—or doesn’t, but as the main thing is 1), you will stick your neck out and go with it. Even if it sounds irrational. And when it fails, you must—because there’s nobody else to do it, because if you lose a person, nobody’s coming in their place—say, we shall try it a different way. Then comes a session of ‘really hard thinking’, then you give up, then they call you and say something like, of course, this is what I did wrong...
And that doesn’t mean you can become great at something, just that you’ll keep trying to.
Seems to me that study well and get a good job is exactly the same as don’t study bad and don’t get a bad job, and don’t stop studying and working, which is easy to say and easy to interpret; while be unique has some ‘emergent properties’. Now… setting the clock for five minutes...
Encouraging someone to be agenty can be effectively done by putting them in charge of communal efforts. It’s not enough to bear some (heroic) responsibility yourself, you have to learn to nurture the tiniest sprouts of initiative of people around you. Even if they want to work in a newspaper.
Among other things, it teaches you to 1) never drop the ball, 2) recognize the vaguest idea as one that has potential—or doesn’t, but as the main thing is 1), you will stick your neck out and go with it. Even if it sounds irrational. And when it fails, you must—because there’s nobody else to do it, because if you lose a person, nobody’s coming in their place—say, we shall try it a different way. Then comes a session of ‘really hard thinking’, then you give up, then they call you and say something like, of course, this is what I did wrong...
And that doesn’t mean you can become great at something, just that you’ll keep trying to.