Last week I sat next to a young woman on a plane. She was 20 and kind and full of interesting things to say.

After a brief intro and chat about the books we were reading, she told me she had just quit college. I sensed a twinge of guilt as she explained her choice.

I finally said, “Good for you, kid – for knowing it wasn’t your path.”

She said, “Yeah, my parents support my decision, but other people…not so much.” 

I said to her what I often tell myself when someone disapproves of my career choices, “Don’t listen to soul suckers.” Then I asked, “What do you do now?” 

“I’m a nanny for two little girls and I absolutely love it. I’m just coming back from a trip to Sanibel Island with the family I work for.”

(FYI: Sanibel is a tiny, beautiful island off the coast of Ft. Myers, Florida. It has white, powdery, sandy beaches and the water is the color of a Tiffany box. It’s a place where you read books in a beach chair as the wind, sun and salt kiss your face. It’s a place where you fall asleep on a porch with the sound of waves breaking like a metronome in the background. Bliss.)

I smiled because I was happy for her and then I asked, “What are your friends in college doing right now?” 

“Well, they just got done with final exams so I guess they’re preparing for the summer semester,” she explained with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Sounds like you have it pretty much figured out,” I said. “Your college friends are back in Chicago finishing exams, and you got paid to go to sunny Southwest Florida and hang out on the beach doing the work that you love.”

“Yeah,” she smiled, nodding her head, happy I approved because she could now speak freely about her college-less life. “We’re going to Hawaii in a couple of months.”

“Nice. Travel is education,” I explained figuring she already knew this based on her decision.

She then told me about her sister, who, a few years ago, decided not to walk in her high school graduation ceremony and instead headed to a music festival.

I thought of all the parents around the country who would kill their kids for a stunt like that, mad at their high school grads for taking graduation away from them, the parents. In our culture, high school graduation is something parents must check off their list to prove they parented the right way.

While hanging at the festival and hula hooping, her sis hooked up with a friend and the two built a hula-hooping manufacturing business together. Eventually the sister went off on her own, and she is now one of the biggest hula hoop manufacturers in the country, running the business out of her parents’ basement.

To this I said, “Seriously?! That’s an amazing story.”

My plane companion said, “Yeah, my parents’ basement is filled with hoops. Her business is named after her pet parrot: Feather Hoops.”

I couldn’t contain my excitement as she told me this story, my big toothy smile and head shaking in disbelief.

I was not only surprised that people were still hula-hooping, I was also impressed with the fact this young woman took a chance and went against what everyone else in town was doing. By not walking in the graduation ceremony and heading to a music festival, she began to write her own story…with hula-hoops no less!

Later in the week, long after my conversation on the plane, I attended a graduation ceremony in my local community. My plane companion and her hula-hooping sister were on my mind.

As I watched the class of 2014 move their tassels to the other side of their caps, symbolizing the transition from student to graduate, I desperately wanted them to understand they don’t have to follow the path already laid out for them; they don’t have to do what the machine is telling them to do.

Our kids should be free to write their own hula hoop story.

On graduation night as I saw one student after another receive their diplomas I imagined myself walking up to the microphone with the lights shining on me as I said, “That piece of paper you just received is a symbol of your accomplishments and you should be very proud. But it doesn’t define you; in fact, it will most likely end up in a box somewhere in the back of your closet. Only you can write the story. So go make a dent in the universe. Go make some fucking hula hoops.”

5 Responses

  1. Robert Brady

    Great Story!

    Worthy for reposting/linking, except for the expletive at the end….now I’ll have to post it with a disclaimer.

    Reply
  2. Jim Oase

    Graduation day in rural America is moving out of town day. Rural America is going extinct at a population loss of 1% per year. Our graduates are not sufficiently educated to remain and raise their families where they grew up.

    City Fathers are constantly staring at the horizon waiting for a White Knight to bring a business to town instead of looking in their classrooms to see how the next generation is being prepared to prosper in their community.

    There are the famous stories about businesses starting in a garage. Rural America has lots of garages, more and more of them sitting behind For Sale signs. Urban America has lots of garages, more and more of them sitting the rubble behind foreclosure signs.

    Its not normal for educated people to turn their life’s work in to rubble and their money into valueless paper. Ignorance historically achieves those outcomes.

    Reply
  3. Michelle

    Oh this made my day as well. I don’t think most teenagers (or parents) realize the damage that can be done to their body and nervous system with long periods of relentless stress. It is no wonder that so many college students experiment with drugs, alcohol and are sexually active during college years, and so many adults are alcoholics, drug addicts or on mood stabilizers. Choosing a path that brings you joy does not mean you will be living on the streets, a college degree is no longer requisite to a successful career. I think of the Indigo Girls song “Closer to Fine” – “I spent four years prostrate to the higher minds got my paper and I was free [but now hundreds of thousands in debt in student loans]”. I am an RN, I had to attend college and university for my degree and love my career. But this is not for everyone. Thank you for the beautiful story.

    Reply
  4. Che

    Well done!! As a Mom, I need to remember every point you’ve made here. I’ll repeat you’re closing sentence in my mind for years to come. Thank you (and, my kids thank you:)}

    Reply
  5. Chandler Rae

    I think this article points out exactly what kids my age struggle with. People wonder what happened to the “Lost” Generation; we’re lost because we have been fed so much contrary information regarding the definitions of success and education. We’re told we have the power to create our own lives, so long as it’s a life within the parameters set up by society. We’re put on a beaten path that is supposed to ensure our success through education…but, when we become educated enough to realize that same path is not only beaten, but broken, we’re persecuted for it. We’re treated like foolish, dreamy kids who don’t understand how the real world works, like new age hippies or anarchists because we aren’t fulfilling expectations placed on us by those living in the past.
    And I think the ego of the parent has a lot to do with it. I gave a speech when I graduated, and I wanted to speak to my peers and tell them to go make their own dent in the universe. That speech was censored by my principal because (and I’m paraphrasing here but not much) according to him my peers didn’t care what I had to say. They wouldn’t remember it in a year. He told me graduation day was for the parents and I needed to address them and thank them, as well as thank the high school and my teachers more than I had.
    “Thank them for what?” I asked him, and he couldn’t even answer me, he just went red in the face and again told me it had to be changed. I included a quote from Oscar Wilde about how not everything can be taught in a classroom, and it was censored.
    My parents are terrific, supportive parents who often tell me that they have no expectations except for my personal happiness and success. And yet I am miserably working towards an English degree I have no idea what I’ll do with because they believe I won’t be successful or happy without it. And so I feel lost, as I imagine the rest of my generation does. But I think we’re just scared to rewrite the rules that have been held over us for so long. So thank you for giving me, and hopefully some others, a little bit of bravery through this article and this entire site. It’s time to rewrite education.

    Reply

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