I picked up a copy of High School Confidential at the library the other day. I won’t give it a thumbs up or down yet, but one point the author makes is that he envisions life as being a Track. Works well with phrases like “being on track” and “on the right track”. By following the Track, he found that each year during college, his life improved. Got better. Was more pleasant. He got the notion into his head that as each life year passes, our lives should move toward improvement upon the past year.

Then he went to a college career day, where hundreds of corporations were vying for the best of the best, and the students were clamoring for jobs that would require them to work 60-80 hours a week in cubicles. NOT an improvement, he thought. And yet it’s what was expected of ALL of the graduating students; finish college and go work at a job that says, “success”. Never mind that you might not really LIKE the job you’re applying for; it’s what you do. Instead, the author opted to fold his resumes into paper airplanes and then jump in a fountain (at which point I said a silent Right On).

As a parent of kids who are being educated in a non-traditional manner, I have to wonder if they will ever feel that pressure to choose the route that takes them to “success”. I’ve talked about this before, but I do hope that both of my kids see their lives as enjoyable, as something that can be improved upon each year, rather than jumping on the Track.