I always ask my students, what are you gonna do when you graduate from university? Well, what are you talking about? I’m going to get a job. I said, have you ever had a job? No.
Not really. What do you think a job is like? I don’t know. I said, well, your first job is probably going to be really, really, really shocking. And so I relate my story of my first job.
Now, when I grew up, everyone had a part time job. So I had a number of part time jobs as well. And then when I graduated from high school, I got a full time job in my little village for about a year. But it wasn’t really serious. You weren’t staying at this job for a lifetime.
Alright? Then later, after my travels in France and Poland, eventually, finish university, it’s time for a real job. Now, no Internet of course, so you have to pound the streets as they say. So I got my resume together and I went from one shop to another shop to one company to another company. No results.
No luck. 6 weeks, I’m looking for a job and I’m desperate for money. It was not fine at all. I was married. My wife was going to have a baby.
It was serious. We needed an income. Right? So, finally, because I’m a student of philosophy. I’m a philosophy graduate.
So this is absolutely a useless profession when it comes to getting a job. I love it, but it’s useless in the real world. So my first job, I go for this interview and there’s a man there. They interviewed me, and David Pettival and another chap by the name of Steve Hanson. And they study my papers and my CV and my degrees and what have you.
And they say, you’ve graduated in philosophy. I said, yes, that’s correct. Philosophy. Philosophy. What can a philosopher do?
And I was so upset, so terrified. I didn’t know what to answer, so I said, think. A philosopher can think. And they said, think? I said, yes, sir.
I can think. So they wouldn’t employ me as a salesman. They were looking for salesman. They wouldn’t employ me as a salesman, but they offered to train me in the advertising business. It was a small little newspaper, part of a big national chain.
So they decided that I was going to become the proof liaison person. And long before the Internet, of course, what a person would do, you’d have a salesman. He would put together an advertisement and a promotional advertisement on spec as it was called and then you would then take it out to the client. Right? And if he approved it, then he would take the ad and the ad still had to be improved.
So that was my job. I had to take the advertisement back to get their signature, and the ads were often wrong. People would scream abuse, bad language that I’d never heard before. It just went on. Terrible.
But eventually, after a couple of years, I remember I needed a second job just to support the first job, but I wanted to be trained in this skill. You know, it seemed to be really interesting and the opportunities for income were very strong. So after a couple of years, I finally got my own territory. I was an official salesman. Now, the first day on the job.
The first day. The very, very first day. I go out and go into this company by the name of Sears. It’s a huge national chain. And lo and behold, I sell them a huge contract on the 1st day.
And I take it back to my boss, a penny saver, a man by the name of Rick Fowler, lovely man, superhuman being, and I present this. Now you think to yourself, if you’re the boss and you have a trainee, basically, and he sells this huge contract on the 1st day, you would have some doubt in your mind for sure. So he was gracious, and he took me he said, let’s go back to the client tomorrow. So we went back to talk to the advertising manager of Sears, and we went into his office, a big office, and I’m very nervous, to be honest. And so I said, hello, mister Smith.
How are you? And he said, yes. How are you? Good to see you. I said, thank you, mister Smith.
I’d like to introduce you to my boss. Forgot my boss’s name. Forgot Rick Fowler’s name. I was just horrified. And so this John Smith was very gracious and he said, that’s okay.
What was your name? Forgot my own name. Forgot my name. Could you believe such a thing? So and then, of course, it’s back Rick Fowler, Leon Lacovee, and we’re fine again.
But I thought to myself, you know, whenever a young person says to me that they’re gonna have some difficulty on the job, I totally understand. And as an aside, I think really with young people, we should be telling them the truth that you go to university not for job training, but to learn how to learn, to learn how to think basically. And if this becomes true, then you’ll always be free. Whatever job you decide on, God willing, later leading to a career, you will be free to learn. Because if you know how to learn how to learn, you will always be able to succeed in whatever environment you’re a part of.
So that’s my thinking behind a job. So I often think of the stress involved and in the end, I was successful. And I think as Osho says, there are no cowards. There are no heroes. There’s only action.
So even when you’re afraid, act Act. And all will be fine. Or at the very least, you’ll be further along where you should be. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary and it’s exciting and it will help us learn. And critical thinking is great. You take care. Bye bye.