How school does not prepare you for work
At school I was one of the high achievers. One of the highest in fact. Top of my Maths class, 8 A*s (and an A) at GCSE, 4 As at A-level. I just about managed a first class degree from university, but it was clear from a few weeks into my very first year that no more would I be top of the class, or anywhere really near it. Now, seven years into my career, as I struggle with things that 3rd years have long mastered, as I watch my more talented junior colleagues get promoted ahead of me, it becomes ever clearer that my mediocrity is not going anywhere. There is no-one and nothing but myself to blame for this, and no I'm not ragging on the system, but my story shows quite plainly how being academic and good at exams is but a small part of what it takes to succeed in the workplace. A shining example of this is a colleague of mine, my age, albeit a school year above me, who failed nearly every actuarial exam at least once, (I failed just the one, once) yet he is not one but two grades ahead of me at work. It just goes to show, once you get to a certain point, no-one gives a rat's arse about the certificates you have.
Boo hoo, poor me, whatever. It is not my intention to piss and moan about my own situation, or to blame the education system, but here are some things which my more successful colleagues have known for years:
Other people
Or "hell", as they are sometimes known. When you study for your exams, 90+ per cent of the time you do so alone, buried in a textbook and your notes. Sure, at school you had your teachers but as a general rule you hadn't anyone to rely on but yourself. Never did you have to wait for someone else to do a part of the studying for you (those mercifully rare instances of teamworked coursework aside). Never did you have to coldcall someone up and offer them nothing in return for answering your questions or giving you information. When you're at home or the library studying, people seem to respect what you're doing and leave you alone to do it. Imagine if every 5 minutes your english or history teachers would ring you up to ask how your homework was going. Susan Cain (in her excellent book "Quiet") tells me that being interrupted is the number one killer of productivity, and I can well believe it.
These things are a fact of life of course, and while the new traditional workplace is strongly geared towards extroverts and could do with some concessions to us introverts (less open plan, time to think alone before group brainstorms, and less of a push to manage more/do less), they aren't going to change any time soon, so I guess those of us who don't like it can get with the program or try something else. But can something be done to prepare people for the environment? Should school teach people to manage others, ask others for information, and share around aspects of learning and delivering? On this last point you might think that that's exactly what group work was supposed to illuminate, but ultimately you'd still have to know everything everyone else does (for the exam) and you knew that - if you do that at work you're a micromanaging control freak who needs to let go. Then again if you don't do it you can't tell your boss about it and she'll think you're not on top of it, so you're screwed either way.
Here's an interesting one - remember those times when you worked in class, and the whole class had to be silent? The complete opposite of an office, then.
There are no easy answers
At school there were, normally in the back of the book. All the information you'd need to answer the questions posed was in the book right in front of you and, furthermore, written in such a way that you could work out what was relevant and what was not. If it wasn't in that book, you didn't need to know it. Again, very much the complete opposite to the real world (and by interpolation, the workplace). I recently had to find out about the new requirements for disclosing company director remuneration in a set of accounts. Was there a textbook that told me everything I needed to know in an easy-to-digest format? Of course not. I spent hours wading through some difficultly worded legislataion that I had to hunt for on the internet and draw my own interpretation from, only to check with a much more experienced colleague and find out I was off the mark in most places. Not only could I not find the answers, I didn't even know what the question was, because neither did my client. My client was looking to me to write the book for them. I had to decide what I had to learn - what was relevant and what was not. Don't get me wrong, that's the reason I have a job in the first place as otherwise people wouldn't need consultants, but rarely before work do you ever have to find things for yourself. Generally you just had to flick to page 21.
As I said, the exam syllabus is all-encompassing. If it ain't on the syllabus, you don't need to know it. Imagine if a school paper asked a question about something not on the syllabus - there'd be an uproar! They'd apologise, pat you on the head, grovel to your parents and boost your mark. School is (other kids aside, goodness knows) all about you and what your teachers and the system can do for you. Work is all about your boss and your clients / customers and what you can do for them (to paraphrase JFK, ask not what your employer can do for you....). Why wait until people get to work before teaching them that?
70% is not a good mark
It'll get you a first class degree from university, but anything less than 100% at work is (rightly) unacceptable. I'm trying (and failing) to imagine delivering a report to a client only telling them 70% of what's important for them to know, and with 30% of the numbers in it being wrong. Doesn't compute does it? Thankfully this one's easier to navigate. At school, like I already said, you're on your own. No-one else takes your exam for you and nearly all exams are closed-book. Work is thankfully not closed-book (quick-fire meetings aside) and others check your work before it goes anywhere important.
Perhaps this isn't a problem at all then, but it does make you wonder the point of silent closed-book exams at all. People grumble that the youth of today can't recite the kings & queens of England from the last 1000 years because, y'know, we have google for that (although not for a pub quiz you cheating so-and-so's). The recent trend in education, seeming to be more pure exam-training and less wide, deep and secure understanding of something, would appear to be very much the wrong one.
Deadlines
You knew when your exams were. You knew what date your project was due. You were quite deliberately given enough time to meet your deadlines (that you worked for 48 straight hours before them was entirely your own fault). Furthermore, the exams and deadlines are set with full knowledge of the other deadlines and exams you are known to have. The exam board knows not to schedule more than one exam at the same time. Your school coordinates it (within reason, and specific student subject choices notwithstanding) so that you won't have every piece of coursework due at the same time. Your clients want work as soon as possible. They do not care what else you have on (why would they?). Neither does your boss really. Your client and your boss do not work together to make your life easy and give you deadlines that work for you. School does not teach you that you won't always have lots of time to leisurely chew over a problem. "Damnit Smith where the hell's that report!?"
Change
At school those deadlines, once set, did not change. Once the exam syllabus had been set and communicated to you, that was it for the year. In this real world I keep talking about, the goalposts move all the time. Data is delayed, information changes, others get things wrong, meetings move around, the government announces an overhaul of the tax rules just when you've finished your draft of a paper on the old ones. All of that is your problem, not your mummy's or your teacher's. Why didn't school prepare you for that? Cruel world, isn't it?
