Friday Mindset #191

Happy Friday!

Way too hot for banter, folks. Let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

Martin was working with students on Wednesday as part of a Sixth Form Readiness conference - post-GCSE kids looking forward to study at the next level. These guys and gals were the lucky ones. Good high schools, supportive homes, well-fed and smartly dressed, with wealthy parents and tons of cultural capital.

They weren’t the sort of kids who’ll ever need to rely on the go-getting agency that comes with being from an ex-mining town in the North East, or having had meat-and-potatoes schooling in Manchester, or achieved against all the odds having grown up in a village in rural Lincolnshire. No shade on any of these places or circumstances - we love working with all students and all schools.

But as fate often has it, this week’s article was in our TBR pile… and was read immediately after the session with the lucky ones. It illuminated the work of the whole week, in fact. A useful lens for refocusing.

It’s written by Cate Hall. Right now, we unapologetically love Cate Hall. (We’ve got her book on pre-order.) What a backstory she has. In this video, for example, she talks about recovering from addiction, an experience which gives her what she calls, “the gift of desperation.” Towards the end, she says, “Most traits that people treat as fixed are actually quite learnable.” This includes curiosity, courage and, as you’ll see from this piece, luck.

We’ve geeked-out about this essay before, but it’s in a new expanded form. Read it with students, and challenge them to have a lucky summer:

Now for the downer. Straight after reading Hall’s work, we came across this next piece, and the contrast was stark.

It’s an analysis of as growing online trend - looks Gen Z-ish - of claiming your hobbies are Netflix, social media and sleeping. Basically watching other people live their lives and complaining about it. What a horrible fate. 😢 Equal parts fascinating and depressing, this might not be one to share with students… though in edited form, it could lead to an interesting discussion…

Something to try...

A video for you this week!

In the same session as we mentioned earlier, Martin ran a Vision activity called Above the Line, Below the Line, which encourages students to think about the array of possibilities that exist out there in the world of work.

And the students he did it with found the thinking challenging and useful. Here’s Martin talking it through for you…

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