I had an interview once for a small beach town in northern San Diego County very early on in my city planning career. I had just graduated from grad school the previous year and had spent that first year working half-time for a employee-owned planning consulting firm that specialized in disability planning and defense base conversion and half-time for a community based non profit assisting grass-roots neighborhood organizations in Oakland with applications for federal Community Development Block Grants.
After that first year, my boyfriend at the time had a notion for us to move to India where he could continue his sitar studies. (He had graduated with a bachelors degree in ethnomusicology and had specialized in sitar – practicing for up to six hours each day.) But before we could head off to India, he had to make some money. So we moved down to San Diego county where he knew he would be able to make some quick money laying tile with a contractor buddy of his.
I got some temp work at first with a pharmaceutical company next to a field of poinsettias working in the warehouse with a bunch of rodeo cowboys prepping packages of medicines for clinical trials. It was super fun work. I was offered a permanent position, right around the same time I noticed an ad for an entry-level city planning position with the next town over.
I went in for the interview and, I thought, handled myself pretty well. While I had had some general exposure to the nuts and bolts of city planning, I was definitely not super familiar, and certainly didn’t understand the particulars of city planning in a coastal town. One of the questions the interview panel asked me had to do with defining the geographic jurisdiction of the California Coastal Commission. I had no idea. I was stumped. So I answered honestly. “I don’t know. But I can promise you that I could walk out of this room and come back within 15 minutes with that information.” See? I was resourceful!
As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate things like resourcefulness, creativity, stick-to-it-ness over other more static characteristics like memorized facts, or brute strength.
One of my college roommates confessed to having something like an inferiority complex when she would compare herself to the rest of us in the house. “For you guys, this stuff [she meant college classes, I thought at the time – but looking back on it now, maybe it was broader than that] comes easy. For me, it’s hard. I have to really work at this to get to that same place.” And even then I thought, god, that discipline will get you way farther than just the lazy work habits I had developed in the spirit of getting by.
So all of this – lord, I do take my time getting to the point, don’t I? – brings me to the conversation I had with my 15-year old son at the end of the day earlier this week. I had read or heard something about cheating becoming a big issue for remote learners. So I asked him, “Do you cheat?” He paused for only the tiniest of moments before answering “Not in all of my classes.”
My 17 year old son was playing video games in the loft outside my bedroom, where I had been chatting with my 15 year old. He had overheard our conversation. “Oh my god, why would you tell her that?” he shouted from way over there.
My response was a little delayed. I was processing. First I dealt with my 15 year old. “I’m super happy that you were honest with me, but at the same time, I thought it was pretty clear that cheating is not okay…” Had we not talked specifically about this before? Maybe not. But I reinforced that it’s too difficult to spell out the rules for every possible scenario. (For example, it’s also not okay to murder someone by beating them repeatedly with a shoe. Do I have to call that out specifically for that to be understood?) “The general rules,” I reminded, “are simple. One, be kind, two, be honest, and three, do things for others.*”
After we squared that away, and I got a commitment from the 15-year old that he wouldn’t cheat any more, I circled back to the 17 year old. “Dude. Don’t encourage your brother to lie. And you – you better not be cheating either…”
This has gotten a little meandering. Here’s how I propose to weave all those thoughts up there together. K (the 15 year old) didn’t know the info. The class he was taking wasn’t actually teaching him how to think or problem solve, it was a “remember this fact” kind of situation. And no, it’s never okay to be dishonest, and cheating to me (as it is likely to everyone?) is a form of dishonesty. But at the same time, he knew how to find the answer. Is there a universe where that kind of resourcefulness might be seen as better indicator of future success than the rote memorization of information?
For what it’s worth, I still got the job even though I hadn’t known how far inland a project had to be to not trigger review of the California Coastal Commission. (I think it was about 1000 feet from the coast for the northern San Diego County.)
* I have mostly just focussed on those first two rules. But I’m drawn to lists of three, so I usually tag on a third one. Right now, it’s help others. I’ve also from time to time completed the list with a “don’t get into any situations that will fundamentally change your life that can’t be undone.” This is intended to cover things like addiction or teen pregnancies. But I digress.
eleven bee 