Grab What You Can: Kristin School
At the Kristin Senior School Prizegiving last November, I confessed that I pitied students sitting exams today. Revision is difficult at the best of times, let alone with all of the distractions of the modern world. The teenage brain is not yet fully wired to focus intently on one subject for long periods of time (unless that subject is food or a member of the opposite sex) and it is hard to keep their attention unwavering. This has always been the case, of course, but at least when I was studying for school exams, distractions weren’t so immediate or abundant. For us, it was the old “hide the comic inside the textbook” trick. Either that, or snatches of guilty day-dreaming, hoping your mother didn’t walk into your room unannounced.
By contrast, today’s young people have to study in a world of abundant distraction. Mobile phones, Skype, email and instant messaging mean they can call a friend any time they start to feel bored. For my generation, that would have meant a trip to the one phone in the house, securely mounted on the kitchen wall, under our mother’s wary eye. And whilst I had to hoist up heavy textbooks big enough to shield a Commando comic from view, today’s teens can stare at the screen of their laptop with alacrity, innocently claiming they are “researching.”
And what a wealth of procrastination options the web offers. Funny cats and Fail clips top the world list of most-viewed time wasters. But I have found another genre to rival them as a mindless, yet oddly compelling, delaying tactic. Try searching YouTube for grocery grab competitions.
The premise is fairly simple – the winner of a competition at a local grocery store gets to push a shopping trolley around the aisles for a fixed period of time, loading in whatever they choose. When the time’s up, they keep everything they have grabbed. What’s compelling is how frustratingly dumb some participants can be! They are in a shop with maximum choice – everything anyone could want to eat or drink lies before them – yet so many seem to blow it. Having wasted nearly an hour of my life googling grocery grabs, I have come to the conclusion that there are six types of contestant:
The Slow & Unfit – these people waddle or wander down the aisles, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their time is limited. Or they wrestle six big turkeys, each one larger than themselves, into the trolley, only to find it’s too heavy for them to push over the line. You find yourself yelling at the screen, “Why did you enter??? Why not just stay in bed?”
The Instant Gratification Junkies – this group head straight for the junk food aisle and set to work piling in armloads of crisps and lollies. Apart from the fact that these are ridiculously cheap items that they could spend their own money on, they also take up way too much limited trolley space. And of course, it’s food of no real value and gone too quickly.
The Sleepwalkers – these folk act as if they were doing their normal weekly shopping. They start in the Fruit & Vege section, umming and ahhhing over the ripest apples, following the same old route they usually take every Sunday. They can’t seem to see the bigger picture, that this is their huge opportunity to break their regular habits and really score big.
The Indecisive – as with the sleepwalkers, these contestants also seem to have forgotten the significance of the occasion. They waste precious seconds picking stuff up, weighing it in their minds, then putting it back again. The clock is ticking!!!
The Crowd-Pleasers – then there are those who are bamboozled by the conflicting demands of others. They stand stationary in the aisle, trying hard to hear what their family and friends are calling out for from the sidelines. You want to silence everyone and just ask “Whose trolley are you filling?”
Not every grocery-grabber is terminally stupid, however. Occasionally, you find one of a special group who know exactly how to get the best out of the deal.
The Strategists – these people are winners. They know the layout of the shop intimately and have mapped out the optimal route in their minds. They have calculated the high value/low volume items and set themselves targets. You can see by the focussed look in their eyes as they grip the trolley handles waiting for the gun, that they lay awake the night before picturing the prize.
My procrastinating hour over, I was left comparing a young person’s journey through school to a grocery grab contest. Consider school as a supermarket and the lessons seem obvious:
What’s on offer is on offer to all. Every child starts with the same-sized shopping trolley – their brain
They each have the same opportunities – the aisles are open to all
Each student has the same amount of time – the speed and energy with which they load their trolley is up to them
What’s in your trolley at the end reflects who you are and what you value.
With the new academic year now upon us our students will be readying themselves for re-establishing routine, selecting courses, registering for sport teams and preparing for auditions. These are big decisions which set the schedule for the coming terms, and once the school calendar begins the days can go past very quickly. For this reason I encourage all students to take a moment to sit back and consider what they want to achieve this year. As you spend another year moving through the aisles, I would ask:
Are you dawdling or sprinting?
Are you feeding your sweet tooth or trying to maintain a balanced diet?
Are you being deliberate and selective about what you learn, or are you unfocussed, making it up as you go along?
Are you studying certain subjects just to please Mum and Dad? Or not studying all, trying to impress others? Or are you trying to feed your own desires?
Have you got a plan? Can you picture what your full trolley looks like when you graduate?
Every year I am impressed by the enthusiasm and spirit of our students at Kristin and I am confident that 2012 will be no different. I look forward to seeing how our students apply themselves to their schooling, sports, arts and adventures in the coming months, supported by teachers and staff who continually restock our Junior, Middle and Senior School shelves with so many rich pickings.
Peter Clague,
Executive Principal.
Education: Kristin School
