After working selling different things like frozen food, houses, cable tv, the internet and more, I thought that if I wanted to get a better job I had to go back to school.
I perfectly remember when that idea came to my mind. I was working as a salesman, and I had a boss that, in my opinion, was useless.
I thought that the only reason he was the boss it was because he had a degree.
It was then when I decided to study again. Even I didn’t feel like doing it, I believed I was in a dead end, and I needed something else. Back then I was 29 years old.
Come back to School at 30
I spent a lot of time going around the subject. Because if I wanted to get to the university, first I had to pass an entrance test, then study one year a formative course and finally get in the university.
I looked like a long way to go. So I focused on the first step to avoid to feel overwhelmed. Therefore the first challenge was to pass the access test.
If I did, I would worry about the next step and later the University.
It is the only way to start. Otherwise, you experience too much pressure, and you don’t even start. It is like that quote. “A 100 km’s journey begins with a first step“.
It is never late to start all over again
I remember very well when I went to inscribe for the first test. It was the last day to do it and at the last hour.
Just arrived I saw a guy talking to the woman who managed the process.
The guy didn’t have a document, and the woman was allowing him to come back the next day to finish the inscription.
The guy had a strange attitude that I didn’t understand at that moment. The conversation went like this:
Guy: Well, then I guess it is too late.
Woman: As I told you it is possible to come back tomorrow morning.
Guy: So you don’t give me any solution. I will not be able to make the inscription.
Woman: I am telling you that you can come back tomorrow with that document and we can do it.
Guy: Then I give up. I go.
I didn’t understand at all what was going on. It seemed surrealistic to me. The woman was giving him a solution, and he just ignored it and went away. What was all about?
A bit later was clear to me. It happened to him as it happens to many people.
Do you know what?
He was afraid to fail, afraid that his friends would laugh at him and tell him he was stupid, that he was wasting his time, that he just couldn’t.
Fear overcame him and he preferred to don’t even try it. It is a pity.
Study again after many years
Personally, I passed the first test, but not without a lot of sacrifices and suffering.
When I took a look at the score on the noticeboard I had to see it three times to be sure. I couldn’t believe it.
When I finally realized that it was real and I had passed I felt relieved and exhausted. All the pressure that I had during the last months it came out.
After that, it came the time for the formative course. It was a strange feeling going to a classroom again. At that time I was 32. I had left school over 10 years ago.
I was the oldest in that class. I felt out of place. But I kept going, and I also passed.
Next on the list was the University. And that is the end of the story.
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