The person you need to be for when you needed it
#105 - an oboe goal to go-boe after (that's a terrible one)
Hi there,
Nothing like a good cup of tea to energise you into a blog post, during what’s been a pretty mundane weekend. Luckily tomorrow is the start of a 3-day Hindu festival so that should lighten the mood, as much as possible with exams in a week.
The week has seen a return to school (bleurgh) but I’m back on holiday in less than a month (talk about the craziness of school term times!) The 4 days at school saw quite a few meetings discussing different ideas whilst still ploughing on with new content in most of our lessons.
Highlight of the week: bit of a cheat one since it isn’t an event, but rekindling my love for the oboe 🎶. With my eyes set on the Senior Soloists’ Concert on 21/2, I’m feeling super motivated to master this piece here. It’s certainly the hardest thing I’ve ever played, with finger technique, range of high and low notes and, of course, how long it is and the stamina for it. But ambition is my middle name so let’s go for it 💪
As we turn into the latter half of my time as school captain, I’ve been thinking about
The next school captains and what I would like to tell them as advice and how/what I would like to be as a predecessor next year.
How I’ve done so far compared to the standards and level I set for myself.
For this, I’ve chosen to measure against what the Year 9 or Year 10 Adi would’ve expected from a good school captain or rather what he would have done if he were in my position. I find this to be a good point to compare to because it removes me from my position a bit, allowing me to be objective about what I’ve done and also trying to think from the perspective of a student I need to serve.
As for the predecessor part, I’ve been thinking about perhaps having recurring 30-minute calls once a month. Whether they are super-useful where we smash through 10 thoughts on our minds or we just chat about life, having the system and the comfort blanket of knowing you can speak your mind to someone who’s been in your position before should be very useful.
This post was spurred by this video describing the time lag between a US president being elected and them getting to work. It mentions the national security briefings and the interview processes for 1000s of officials necessary in a change of power. This is the kind of scenario where the outgoing president has the choice to provide an even better transition process than the one they received, similar to the “leave a place better than you found it” adage.
This philosophy of being the person you needed in the past is a good way of paying it forward, helping someone one stage below you (for me that’s Year 12s, 11s and 10s) achieve what you wanted to, giving them the opportunity that you had or, even better, didn’t have but know how to get. It is the equivalent of unrolling the ladder down now that you’re at the next step up.
This goes hand-in-hand with one of my earlier posts below about helping future you by things you do now, instead of falling for the projection bias, for example, of expecting future you to be more productive than you are right now. Perhaps it is a useful exercise to write to yourself in the future about what you’re struggling with now, how you’re thinking of overcoming them and what you need. Reading a few years down the line may advise the way you interact with people now that age but also unlock insights from what you’ve done to get past the problems or, if you’re still facing them, give you a different perspective on them.
At the same time, we must be mindful not to act solely in the way that we wanted, appreciating that everyone is different and has different needs. It is similar to the advice of “parent the child you’ve got”. There is a balance to be struck between giving your children what you yearned for as a child and what their individual needs are and what matters to them. Be informed by the past and be open to the present to be intelligent for the future. Forcing the ‘child’ in the relationship to listen to the things that you’ve decided upon reflection that you needed to hear or give them what you needed only creates a cycle of “this is what my ‘parent’ wasn’t for me. When I’m a ‘parent’, this is what I will give my child” which can, effectively, defeat the purpose.
Another reason to take this with caution is to remember that the older you get and the larger the bank of experience and maturity levels get, the wiser your stance becomes. Being specific about it, when I was talking about the Y9 Adi would’ve expected more from his school captain, a close friend told me to remember that the Y9 Adi hasn’t gone through the trial of juggling the heavy plates of four A-Levels heightening in difficulty, a multi-stage university/Cambridge process as well as being School Captain and having a life around it. So he should be told to respectfully “shut up because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about”.
Perhaps we don’t need to be that rude but we can appreciate the sentiment - remember that they only had part of the picture, they didn’t know everything that you are going through, and neither will you in the role reversal we discussed earlier. There is always imperfect information, to bring in a microeconomics term, but we can do our best of reflecting retrospectively to advise forward action by keeping in mind the constrains and differences the previous Adi had as opposed to now.
To summarise, the amount of advice and help you gain from seniors and your peers should be reciprocated by the hands you lend to pull others up on the path you went down, almost creating a net balance between loans taken and loans given. When doing this good karma stuff, remember to consider what you would’ve wanted when you were in that position and tailor your actions and advice accordingly. However, this should be mixed in with insight you’ve gained from who you are now and what you would’ve failed to see back then.
This is a very time-travel kind of post, jumping backwards and forwards between versions of Adi. What I can tell you is that all the versions of Adi enjoyed writing (and will hopefully continue to…!)
Book of the week 📖
No progress on The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness, as expected with resuming school and revision.
Podcast of the week🎙️
I don’t often link to niche podcasts like this about my interests but I really enjoyed this interview, painted a picture of the kind of career I could take - a Birmingham lad who likes maths, consulting and cricket… 🤔
Thing I’m grateful for this week 🙏
After a lot of thinking, I’m going to resort to a simple pleasure - the TV. Allows me to have quality entertainment and access to a whole host of shows - currently enjoying Dragons’ Den, Reacher and James May: Our Man in India.
Quote of the week 💬
The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary – Vidal Sassoon
Here’s to a week of a bit more sunshine and oboe progress for me, and equally wonderful things for you.
Adi