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Destination Unknown
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Mark Des Cotes, I just completed my first week of the 21 day fix exercise program, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I talk about reaching destinations you didn’t set out for.
I hope you’re doing great this week I know I am, I landed a great new client this week who’s opening her first business in town here next month. She’s hired me to design her logo, her stationary, her website, her marketing material, the whole nine yards. When I asked her how she heard about me she said I came highly recommended by several people she asked. The funny thing is, a few of the people she mentioned I’ve never heard of. Just goes to show you that you never know who out there is talking about you, so never give anyone a reason to talk ill about you.
Are any of you watching the women’s world cup? That’s soccer, aka football to those of you not in the know. The tournament is being held in Canada this year so there’s a lot of buzz about it everywhere I go. Our TV here has been glued to it since it all started on June 6th. If your country is represented here I wish you the best of luck. Unless you’re playing against my Canadian girls in which case you’re going down.
Today’s Fun Fact of the Day: Did you know that the word “Soccer” that we North Americans call the beautiful game, is actually a British term, coined in the late 1800s? The game is officially called association football or simply football around the world, and the word “Soccer” originated as a slang abbreviation of the word “Association” in order to differentiate the game from rugby football.
Soccer was in fact the most common term in Britain until 1970s when it began to be perceived incorrectly as an Americanism. So there you have it.
Here’s What I leaned yesterday.
Like you, I love hearing the stories submitted to our Friday forum each week. This past week we heard a story from Faith about her love of teaching and how it was never her intention to become a teacher. Hearing her story gave me an idea for today’s episode. So thanks Faith.
I touched briefly on my journey to be a graphic designer way back in my very first Friday Forum submission in SILY number 10. That story was mostly about how I met my wife but it touched a bit on our college years. Look it up if you’re interested.
Here’s the expanded version of that part of my story.
To start off, let me give you a little background on how the school system worked here in Ontario back in the 1980s.
Unlike in the USA where the word college refers to any institute of higher learning, here in Canada there is a big difference between colleges and universities. Colleges are easier to get into and give out diplomas for their programs whereas if you want a degree you need to apply to university and hope you get accepted. The strange thing is that some programs are offered at both institutions. The only difference is that having a degree opens more doors for you after graduation.
High school has changed since I attended, but back in the 80s, it started in grade 9 and continued through to either grade 12 or 13 depending on your post secondary path. If you planned on going to college you could graduate after grade 12. But if you planned on going to university you needed to complete grade 13. There were also two different levels of study you could choose for your maths and language classes, general and advanced. If you wanted to go to university you needed to be in the advanced levels.
I admit, back then I was a bit of a slacker. School didn’t interest me very much and I didn’t apply myself like I could have.
Math came naturally to me so I was enrolled in the advanced classes. But I struggled with english and I barely got by at the general level. I did manage to squeak a pass in those classes and in the spring of 1987 I graduated from grade 12.
Now, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my life. Those aptitude tests to help you choose a career path put me down as either a helicopter pilot or a computer programer.
Helicopter pilot sounded interesting but once I saw the price tag associated with it I quickly forgot about it. I could have become a computer programer, I was very adept at the various computer languages we learnt in high school. But I didn’t want to have a job where I sat in front of a computer all day. I know, ironic isn’t it.
My choices were to enrol in a college general arts program, take a year off and work while I decided or go back for another year of high school.
My dad had recently lost his cushy vice president position when his company closed down, so my parents didn’t have the means to support my post secondary education, especially for a general arts program while I decided on my future.
I thought about taking a year off and working, but I knew myself well enough to know that once I left school and found a job, I probably wouldn’t go back. So I decided to go back for grade 13.
As I mentioned earlier, grade 13 is for university so there are no general level programs. My guidance counsellor told I could come back but if I decided to continue to university I would need to find a program that didn’t have advanced english as a prerequisite. I agreed.
Things were going well at school but I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.
I wont go into great details on the this next part of the story because I covered it way back in SILY episode 10 but the quick play by play goes like this.
At the beginning of the second semester of grade 13 I saw a girl from a grade below me that I really liked going into her grade 12 advanced english class. On a whim I asked my guidance counsellor if I could also take that class. Since I already had my grade 12 general level english the school considered it equivalent to the grade 11 advance that was the prerequisite and allowed me.
I ended up doing very well in that class and became good friends with the girl I liked.
At the end of grade 13 I still didn’t know what I wanted to do so I told my guidance counsellor that I enjoyed that english class so much that I wanted to come back and take all the grade 13 english classes. The school allowed it so I came back for a second grade 13 and ended up graduating from high school for a second time in 1989 an english major. I even received a couple of bursaries from our local college.
During that second grade 13 year, I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my future. I had always been a television addict. Strangely enough one of the things I loved about TV were the commercials. I loved the ingenious ways they came up with to sell things or get messages across. If fact I still love commercials today. It drives my wife, and yes, she is that girl from my english class, again, episode #10 if you want to know more, it drives her crazy when we’re watching a recorded program and while fast forwarding the commercials something will catch my eye and I have to rewind it to watch it.
Well, I decided that I wanted to produce television commercials for a living. I found a program at Sheridan College in Oakville Ontario that offered the exact program I was looking for. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough money saved up from my part time job to cover tuition and living expenses for the three year program but I was determined to go. I figured that one more year of working part time and I’d have enough.
In the meantime I decided to take advantage of the bursaries I received and enrolled in the graphic design program at the local college. The money I received covered my first year’s tuition, and since I could live at home the only expenses I had to worry about were books and supplies.
I thought I might learn something in the graphic design program that may benefit me in my future television commercial career. What I learned was how much I loved the program. So much so in fact that I completely forgot about Sheridan College and the TV advertising program they offered.
I went back for the remaining two years of the graphic design program and in 1992 I graduated top of my class. I’ve been designing ever since.
Here’s what I learned.
It’s good to have a destination in mind before you set off on a certain path. But just because you know where you’re going doesn’t always mean you’ll get there.
You’ve heard the term fork in the road? It’s a metaphor often used for moments in life when choices are required. It’s appropriate when looking at specific situations, but when you look back at ones life, you don’t see forks, you see tree branches that branch off, cross paths, intersect and so on.
Like Faith in her Friday Forum talking about becoming a teacher, I had no intention nor desire to ever be a graphic designer. I enrolled in that course with every intention of leaving after the first year. And yet now, I love what I do so much that I can’t imagine not being a graphic designer.
Life is funny, there are rarely straight paths to any destination. And if you do manage to reach the one you set out for, when you look back the road usually isn’t the one you envisioned at the start.
So don’t worry if your path in life looks like it’s veering off form what you imagined. The destination you end up at may be better than the one you were aiming for. And if it isn’t, the roads right there, just get back on it and keep going.
I’m Mark Des Cotes and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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