The Shifting Sands

Like I said a few days ago, I would have been a very average lawyer.

But that doesn't mean the law school experience wasn't valuable.  It was. 

In fact, on my very first day of law school my Property Law professor taught me something incredibly useful.

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Imagine two huge boulders standing maybe 100 feet apart.

Now imagine a river of sand running between the rocks.

My professor called the boulders the "hard rocks".  Those represented the legal questions that can be answered relatively easily.

Most of the questions in the profession were hard rocks.  They had answers.  Spend enough time searching databases and making phone calls and you could figure them out.

The river of sand in between the rocks was a much different place.

There the answers were much harder to come by.

In the sand, it's a challenge just to figure out a good question, much less an answer.

In the sand the landscape keeps changing.  A good answer 2 years ago may be invalid now. 

Or a technique that failed 5 years back may be viable now

The professor told us that our careers would be defined NOT by how we handled the hard rocks, the easy questions . . . but how we handle those questions that toss us into the shifting sand.

The lesson to us was clear:

Our job is to deal with the complex questions.

That's how careers are made.

That's how your career will be made, whether it is as an artist or an arts administrator.

Don't be afraid of the hard stuff.

Resist those that desire easy answers.

And remember that being confused and trying to figure all out is a perfectly acceptable place to be.

 

 

 

Comments

[Deanna]

Based on that I must be a genius by now!

I also saw a post on alllooksame ( http://alllooksame.com/?p=241 ) the other day which this reminded me of. In that case it was about Chinese tradition of learning basics versus American emphasis on "the BIG IDEA." You know we love our BIG IDEAS here.

In multiculturalism you have to hang out in the shifting sands as well, with so many valid yet varied perspectives on problem solving.

Thanks for your acknowledgement that it's okay to hang out here!