How university changes you: a public school kid's guide to growing up

Many years ago I remember sharing a fascinating insight with a friend of mine. Having migrated to Australia from England with her family twelve months before, she headed back to see her friends over Christmas. She was finding the transition to her new life difficult, but visiting the place she must have considered home wasn't much easier. She returned to familiar and normally friendly people calling her "skippy" and laughing at her slightly broadened accent. "When I am here I feel English and when I was over there I was Australian," she said. It struck me as a profoundly sad observation: she no longer felt at home anywhere. She might have no recollection of this conversation but it's a story that stuck with me.

Having never had any serious relocations to contend with during my life, my primary identity crisis revolves around class. I regularly invoke the blue collar/white collar dichotomy in jokes because these broad characterisations hit extremely close to home for me. My father worked for thirty years at a steel mill; his brother still works there after almost fourty. On my mother's side, we have three butchers - two by birth and one by marriage. My mum's father worked as a plumber and my brother is months away from finishing his electrician's apprenticeship.

I work for a federal government department.

In the interests of full disclosure, my mother worked in a bank for much of my childhood and as an accountant since, so it's not as if there are no white-collared shirts in the wardrobe. To know our personalities, that my mother's occupation and my own bear some resemblance makes sense, though on the male side of my family, you'd have to cast the net pretty wide to find someone whose most used tools were a keyboard and mouse.

None of this is intended to disparage or valourise either way of life; quite the opposite, in fact. My story is about being caught between aspects of both identities without ever feeling completely at home in either one.

My upbringing was essentially blue-collar. We lived in a nice, seaside outer-metropolitan suburb of about twenty-thousand people. Dad worked night shifts at the steel plant and Mum did four days a week at the bank. My brother and I both went to nearby, functional public schools; I played cricket for a few years and he played AFL. I spent my weekends playing video games with friends, watching football and practicing guitar.

It was clear that school was going to come pretty naturally to me from quite early on. While I was never a prodigy, most things we studied came easily. I first recall wanting to go to university at age thirteen, which was as soon as I had any understanding of what university was. And when the time came, it happened.

Photo by Kam2y

I remember sitting in political science classes discussing the impact of the Whitlam government on Australian society. Many of the teachers had their tuition fully subsidised by Gough's government, a stick with which they playfully poked us fee-payers. But even in this co-payment era, university is still fundamentally accessible to people from all backgrounds. And so with accessible university education, the white-collar life becomes almost a matter of choice, just a three year commitment from reality. We have take young people who years before may have worked in local factories or the family business and given them a license to construct brand new identities and desires free of old constraints. This identity reformation is fuelled by the new ideas, people, opportunities and feelings that further education fosters.

To understand this journey is to understand much of who I am today. I am proud to be a product of a public school system that gave me the opportunities I needed to grow, while being taught and encouraged by some of the most valuable and kind people I've come across. As grateful as I am for the classroom lessons, I am just as grateful that it did not shelter me; that it showed me the humility, strength and openness that I consider essential tools in living a humane and thoughtful life.

I am even more proud to be the son of two unfathomably decent, determined and generous parents who battled hard and took risks to give us all a better life. They brought me into the world and shared with me everything they knew: the sports, the music, the places, the big questions and the big opportunities. Every aspect of who I am has its origins in these things. When I needed their support to build the foundations for my own life, they obliged, and when the time came for me step out and become the person that I needed to become, they understood. I will be forever indebted.

I am conflicted by the tension between my inner-city, white-collar existence and the grounded and practical nature of my upbringing. I've taken to calling it blue-collar survivor's guilt: why was I the one who got away? Why am I the one who gets to sleep when at night time and leave the office right on four? Like few other men in my extended family, this is the life I have been granted. But like my English friend, I feel like the fancy guy amongst my blue-collar friends and the public school product amongst the fancy people. And I do understand that so much of this is my own perception of situations, which means it is something only I can resolve. Though perhaps it is not something that needs resolving; rather, it can be a source of great strength. Instead of being neither of these things, I can become comfortable being what I am, which at any time can be neither, either or both. Life demands that we be able to communicate effectively with every person we come across, and a fundamental part of this is empathy. This is something I believe I can offer.

We can't escape our past, and it probably shouldn't be something that we try to do. These formative years are too pivotal in shaping who we become. Sometimes coming to terms with what you are now is difficult, even when you've been as fortunate as I have. It is clear that I have work to do in these aspects of my life, but I see it as something to look forward to rather than dread.

Do you might have aspects of your past that you struggle with? How have you changed since your childhood and how has it affected who you are today? I understand how tough these issues are to think and write about, but if you've got something to share, feel free to do so in the comments box below. Thanks for reading, everybody.

Haters gonna hate: Why your motivations might be hurting you

Every now and then I come across something in pop culture that worries me. I'm not alone in this, of course; as each generation passes we look to the kids just a little bit younger than us to justify our own behaviour to ourselves. Look how crazy they are. See, we weren't so bad after all. I'd like to think my concerns are more profound that petty generational griping, though.

At the top of this post there is a picture of a cap for sale from a popular online clothing retailer. Embroidered on it is the phrase "haters gonna hate". I'm not certain of how this phrase was popularised, but that it has become so widely understood that clothing manufacturers put it on $60 baseball caps shows that it has resonated deeply within our culture. To me, it alludes to an idea buried within our psyches, a tool that we have all used to motivate ourselves to achieve something we thought we couldn't otherwise.

On the surface, it's not a bad message: regardless of what you choose to do in your life, people will question you, so you might as well go about things your way. The problem is that you don't actually have haters but are pretending you do to convince yourself you are doing difficult or interesting things. If driving teaches us anything, it's that most people are too caught up in their own lives to worry too much about yours. It takes a certain kind of self-involvement to believe that you have amassed a legion of haters jealously observing your every move.

This phenomenon is understood quite differently depending on the context in which you are referring to it. If you believe you are doing what you want instead of what the world expects you to do, you can say that "haters gonna hate." If you are motivated to get rich because kids at school teased you for being poor, you're doing it to "show them". We go into battle against the abstracted enemies we create to convince ourselves we are making the right decisions instead of searching for this assuredness within ourselves.

I have no doubt that creating these abstracted enemies is an extraordinarily powerful motivational technique because I have often relied upon them as a source of inspiration in the past. Don't let the fact that I'm the one currently denouncing this trick you into thinking I've figured this out, because I have as much to learn as anybody. It's been three and a half years since I made lifestyle changes to get into better shape, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't tiny remnants of chubby, thirteen year-old Jonathan remaining as I headed to the gym tomorrow night.

So far I've described these foes as abstracted, but for some people the enemies may not be abstract at all: they might have names, faces and memorable taunts. The effect is the similar, though. If you're on the treadmill to prove to those girls from high school you won't always be a fat bitch, you've externalised your motivation. We need to consider the kinds of people we actually want respect from before we consider seeking retroactive approval that does nothing to heal old wounds. Any changes made as a result are rarely sustainable in the short term and can be unhealthy in the long term, too.

Jose Mourinho is perhaps the world's most famous and successful soccer coach. He is renowned for his charisma and ability to manipulate players and the press. Mourinho develops team spirit by fostering a 'siege mentality,' convincing his players that the media, referees and administrators are conspiring against them. His teams, often featuring some of the most creative and technically gifted players in the world, play a rigid and uninspiring style of soccer that achieves short-term success but does noting to promote sustainable or philosophical success. Mourinho is sport's master of abstracted enemies.

Don't just commit to making positive changes in your life, commit to making them for positive reasons. You have absolutely nothing to prove to past versions of yourself or to people that never cared about you in the first place. True change, the kind of personal growth we crave, comes from wanting to be better for yourself and those who care about you. Justify your decisions and actions by what makes you happy, not what you think other people want or expect of you. Do not rely on others in your search for validation and peace because these things can only be found inside of you.

Identifying emotional quicksand and how to avoid it

Being a proactive person brings advantages in many aspects of life. The process of learning almost anything benefits from repetition, practice and being able to learn from mistakes. Whether we are working on speaking French or playing tennis, the most reliable way to develop our skills is to practice them over and over again.

This type of learning has always suited me. It has allowed me to perform well at school and become a capable guitar player and writer, amongst other things. As children we have time to spend and if we are diligent enough, we have the opportunity to develop abilities that will enrich our entire lives. I remember spending school holidays playing guitar for hours at a time, pouring over transcripts of 'Stairway to Heaven' and 'Enter Sandman' as the skin of my index fingers flaked and peeled. I committed this time because I cared so much about improving and growing as a guitar player and knew it was the way I achieved that.

What recently occurred to me, perhaps not a moment too soon, is that these principles cannot be applied in every situation. Not all learning is about simply repeating actions and expecting that progress will occur. The idea that not all learning comes about as a result of commitment and sheer will is still pretty fresh to me. Some scenarios benefit from less action and more precision, from being accurate rather than consistent. In these moments I feel powerless and incapable because my usual paths to self-improvement are counter-productive, perhaps even harmful. When I can't drag myself closer to the finish line, I flail.

When you're in quicksand, the way to get yourself in deeper is to resist, fight and claw; getting out requires that you remain calm and still while you call for assistance. This is our mental test: can we come to terms with these situations and let go of the fear of not being in control?

A sniper sits on a hill waiting days at a time and he gets a single shot, a single opportunity. Once he pulls the trigger, he broadcast his presence and location to all concerned. He doesn't get to come back tomorrow and try again. An athlete with a muscle tear sits on the sidelines for weeks, desperate to get back into training so they can return to doing what they love. If they try to come back too soon or train too hard when they begin again, they risk injuring themselves more severely. Somewhere between the second and third phone call to that girl, you go from being enthusiastic to creepy. And worse than a muscle injury, undoing that damage can be impossible. Sometimes you just have to wait and see.

When you've been conditioned to believe that being proactive is the path to progress, this is a bitter pill. The idea that not-doing could increase your chance of success in anything is counter-intuitive but true. Wanting something so badly can push it further away. The challenge for those who see this in ourselves is clear: can we be insightful enough to know when we're in quicksand and strong enough to let go of the fear of not being in control?

If you identify as a person who struggles with quicksand or has a story to share where this applied to them, I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. Sharing gives us the opportunity to help ourselves process these things and may assist others in understanding themselves as well. Thanks for reading.