- Birth (you gotta start somewhere)
- Go to elementary school, spend the afternoons running around like idiots. Do things only idiots would do.
- Go to middle school, be mean to each other
- Spend high school first feeling lost, then concentrating on getting into a good college
- If you’re luck enough to get an admissions officer to take pity on you, you head off to that good college, and learn about life
- Start a career. It need not be high up, it need not be the career for the rest of your life. But hopefully get into a job that could lead somewhere.
- Move up the ladder. Challenge yourself. Get noticed
- Perhaps pick up an advanced degree to really let them know that you’re serious
- Achieve a management level position (or whatever it is that you “want” to do in life – maybe it’s being a top-level consultant)
- Keep moving around, be more successful, transition from a mode of ambitious drive to a calmer mode when you’ve reached the first of hopefully several major career points
- Retire, die happy.
This is a pretty basic sequence of events, of course. But it’s also roughly what I want to do in life.
My question is: are there ages that are associated with these various waypoints? Can one not move from one step to another, or perhaps gain respect at particular steps, if one is too young?
We all hope that the answer is “no.” That we live or at least work in a meritocracy and we will be rewarded for our hard work and achievements.
But lately it seems that I can’t get respect from others. Lately I feel like just a kid being treated as such.
Tons of fun. And it sure does feel unfair.