I was reading the other day about a person who seemed exceptional, probably because there was an article about her in my Alma Mater publication. She had lost her mom and dad in an auto accident when she was 11, yet went on to become a college professor and mentor to many students.
I believe there are books about various people who have overcome lots and lots of adversity to become well known and sought after as speakers to tell us, “We can Do it!” These exceptional people come into our lives when we need them, or don’t think we need them.
After losing a wife to death, a job, and another wife to divorce, and not being able to find a job in my profession after 15 years of search, I was asked how people can be resilient. My response was that people are resilient because they have to be. Many of us do not choose “to be or not to be.” If we have to ‘be,’ then we need to be resilient—not a choice.
Of course I became one of those ‘exceptional’ people who, after someone read about my response, asked me to speak at a national conference about being resilient. My topic was more about doing, rather than worrying about the small stuff, i.e., if someone steals credit for your idea, forget about it. If it was that good someone wanted the credit, pat yourself on the back. And if your department closes down; don’t worry about it. What you learned in one area, at their expense, will help you elsewhere—be encouraged by it.
I wonder if there will be more articles about people like me, who continue to be scarred in life by unfortunate events such as losing their research, their computer files, and their precious time due to computer failures; things like old computers that stop working, programs that need upgrading, gremlins within the computer called viruses or Trojan horses, or in my vocabulary, a bunch of other things I can’t repeat here. I think I’m pretty exceptional in that area too.
I certainly don’t ascribe to the idea that programmers are exceptional, although they seem to be considered that in ‘kind’ company. They make my life miserable time and time again. updating programs and drivers that were working fine, but as soon as they are upgraded, NOTHING SHORT OF CAPITAL LETTERS IN AN ARTICLE can express the consternation of something going wrong when work had to be done in order to be paid, or meet deadlines.
I’d like to see more about us exceptional people who have over the years found their way through the morass of fixing things without help from those kids in India, or students at the sales stores. The act of having to buy new equipment; not to keep up with the Jones, but to keep things working. Buying new, upgrading, and relearning ‘all -that -is-no -longer -useful -to -know -stuff,’ or finding out the new stuff is not compatible with our old stuff.
I think these events makes us pretty special people and more articles should be launched regarding these ‘mundane undertakers’ who make up the majority of us and keep things running. Certainly the article would tell of our struggle to learn how to type, and the effort we put in changing ribbons or fixing a bent or stuck keys of the typewriter. And of course, how we started looking for things to do, to make all this work and retyping a thing of the past. We did so much fiddling around, the computer was invented to fix those things which didn’t work too well to get more work done.
Having fixed all that with computers, we now need to trade out those things for something that takes less maintenance time and runs forever; something self-correcting, self-healing machines. And of course software which will do what we want it to do, how we want it done, not how the programmer thinks it should be done.
All this reminds me of the booklet I published back in 1973 using an IBM Selectric Typewriter, and I decide computers are actually pretty cool—but use up an enormous amount of time fixing them so they work. And this reminds me of all the work and time some farmers have to do on their tractors so they can get out in the field to get the crops in, or the urban riders of lawn mowers; keeping those things running and not burning out.
It begs the question—have we really advanced so much that we have more time to enjoy life, or have we just traded our disasters for new kinds; and none of us are exceptional at all?
Actually, I’m sure, someday my Alma mater will write an article about me, and how I survived computers to become a sought after writer, and speaker, about being Exceptional.
On the other hand, with AI doing the writing for us, will our work, writing, be fun, or correcting the computer’s searching for answers. I believe we have found a new way to be using time exceptionally.
PERSPECTIVES with Paul T. Jackson. © 2022, by Paul T. Jackson
