Adapt to What's Coming

My older sons, Spencer and Nathan, are recent graduates of Maeser. My youngest son, Alexander, will be a junior next year. Each has attended Maeser since seventh grade. And, thanks to that experience, they know a lot.

But none knows what’s coming.

When I graduated from high school, there was no Internet. Well, okay, there was something evolving into the Internet. But few people knew about it. And fewer used it.

My teachers didn’t know that I would go on to engineer web applications. That’s not just because web applications didn’t exist. It’s mostly because few of us had ever conceived of such a thing.

Web application? Huh? Is that what spider man uses to prevent zits?

So, no, my high school teachers didn’t prepare me for the particulars of my profession. They couldn’t. But they could and did do something else more important.

They taught me how to think better.

The Internet took the world by storm. It terminated or transformed beyond recognition countless jobs and whole industries. Those who weathered the storm best tended to be those who were willing and able to adapt.

Maybe some of us are adaptable by nature. But I think just about all of us can learn to be more adaptable – much more adaptable.

We can learn how to observe, deliberate, ask questions, improvise, reason, express ideas, and solve problems. We can gain confidence, creativity, and compassion.

We can learn how to be more intelligent. People think of intelligence in many ways. I like to think of intelligence as the capacity to adapt. It’s the capacity to achieve goals across different and dynamic contexts.

We can learn this kind of intelligence, this adaptability, at least to some substantial extent. And we can help each other do that. Indeed, we must!

The world didn’t stop changing at the advent of the Internet. To the contrary, the Internet accelerated change. Like sharper blades made sharper blades in the Iron Age, and bigger machines made bigger machines in the Industrial Revolution, so more information is making more information.

And none of us knows what’s coming.

But we can still prepare. We can be more ready for whatever it might be. We can be more adaptable – more intelligent. We can cultivate ever greater capacity to pursue our bright and shining goals, whatever they might be.

That’s a principal reason that Dorothée and I chose to send our sons to Maeser. The promise was a liberal arts education, leveraging the Socratic method, to develop prosocial character and critical thinking skills. And, in my observation and by most accounts, Maeser has lived up to that promise, admirably and commendably.

I don’t know what’s coming for Spencer, Nathan, and Alexander. But the education they’ve received at Maeser has increased my confidence that they’ll be able and willing to adapt. And it’s increased my confidence that they’ll have friends who are able and willing to adapt with them.

So bring it on.

The Lion’s Roar at Maeser Preparatory Academy originally published this article as “Adapt to What’s Coming.”