Bob Upgren ~ Author ⋅ Speaker ⋅ Master Chalk Artist

More and more, I meet people who are frustrated with their life and unfulfilled by their work. They’re forced to endure life rather than enjoy it. On the other hand, I also know people who simply love what they do and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. “This isn’t what I do,” they say. “This is who I am.”  In every walk of life there are people for whom this is true, people who have discovered what I call, their “PATH” in life. Discovering your “PATH” involves doing something for which you have a natural aptitude. In short, you are good at what you do.   Really good.

But it’s more than that, it’s also about passion. You have to love it, too. The original meaning of “passion” is to suffer or endure, as in the movie, The Passion of the Christ. The modern meaning has evolved to include love, attraction, and pleasure. But passion can exist for more than just another person. Passion can also surface for a process. We can be passionate about things like music, math, cooking, sport, and teaching; whatever fires your imagination. We all have different aptitudes and we all have unique passions. The challenge is to pursue the discovery of both. It’s in the fusion of these two elements where we live our best lives, where we truly discover our “PATH” in life.

Finding your “PATH” is a journey. It often begins by enduring a job you neither feel good at or fulfilled by. Only through time, and the honest assessment of your passions and talent, you discover the enjoyment and satisfaction of a calling. It may mean switching vocations or refining the duties within a current position. Whatever the case, when you find your “PATH”, you know it. It’s a vital process where you shift from saying, “This is what I do,” to proclaiming, “This is who I am.”

I donʼt think anyone can disagree with the idea that we live in a world that is moving extremely fast. It’s so fast in fact, that itʼs getting hard to slow it down. Competition is increasing at the speed of light, globalization is spreading like a California forest fire, and of course, technology is the pimp on the corner, waiting there to offer us the next “fix” to feed the entire affair. We quickly feel the need for the next technology “fix”. The next IPAD. The next Wii. The next Droid. And the next, well, you get the idea.

Our accelerating world has also made that which was common, completely uncommon. Think about it.  Five years ago, a college degree meant something.  A four-year degree showed fortitude, perseverance, and accomplishment.  This degree once secured a job for the college graduate. Now, it guarantees the graduate absolutely nothing. In 2011 it gives you a ticket to maybe, and I do mean maybe, get into the game. The four-year degree is a commodity and advanced degrees will soon become the necessity.

Due to the acceleration of generations to come, itʼs now being said that a nation which fails to innovate, falls behind. I believe this is true. I also believe that the best way to spur innovation is to inspire children to pursue the passions and talents they were born with. We shouldn’t try to make them a cog in the system, but but guide them to be artistic leaders that become system builders, not workers.
The problem, however, is that most children donʼt know what the best version of themselves looks like. Most adults, for that matter, donʼt know either. Worse yet, neither group seems to know how to discover it.

Unfortunately, one of the main reasons for this is education. Not the people of education, but rather the system of education.  A system built upon the standards of the industrial revolution. A system that is quickly becoming outdated in a world moving faster and faster.

Its not that we have to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are parts of the current system that do work, but if we donʼt add discovery, artistry and creative elements to the current system, we will continue to see students drop out at an alarming rate.

As someone who travels the world speaking to youth, educators and leaders, I have witnessed first hand a school making enormous strides in leveraging the “creative” in kids. So, rather than give a 5-point bullet list of things to do, I instead will offer you the link to a school that impressed me during my visit. One I look forward to returning to soon.

21st educators, I give you Booker T. Washington school in Dallas, Texas.  http://btwhsptsa.org/

Across the United States, about seven thousand students drop out of school every day. This statistic may not have been noticed fifty years ago, but the era of a high school dropout earning living wage has ended.

By dropping out, these youth significantly diminish their chances to secure a good job and a promising future. Don’t bank on the story of “drop-out turned millionaire” either. For every one who makes it, I’ll show you one hundred struggling.

Furthermore, each class of dropouts is responsible for substantial financial and social costs to the communities, states and country in which they live.  Here are six statistics worth noting when it comes to the drop out challenge.

1. Dropouts suffer from reduced earnings and lost opportunities; there are also significant social and economic costs to the rest of the nation.
2. Over the course of his or her lifetime, a high school dropout earns, on average, about $260,000 less than a high school graduate.
3. Dropouts from the Class of 2010 alone will cost the nation more than $337 billion in lost wages over the course of their lifetimes.
4. If the United States’ likely dropouts from the Class of 2006 had graduated, the nation could have saved more than $17 billion in Medicaid and expenditures for uninsured health care over the course of those young people‘s lifetimes.
5. If U.S. high schools and colleges were to raise the graduation rates of Hispanic, African American, and Native American students to the levels of white students by 2020, the potential increase in personal income would add more than $310 billion to the U.S. economy.
6. Increasing the graduation rate and college matriculation of male students in the United States by just 5 percent could lead to a combined savings and revenue of almost $8 billion each year by reducing crime- related costs.

So let’s review. If a person drops out, you will make less money, slow the economy, burden tax payers, increase national debt, and live a less fulfilling life. It seems like that old saying of “stay in school” has real numbers behind it.