Mediocrity

What is one of the things about your job that frustrates you the most? That is a question an interviewer might ask when you are going after that better job. The thing that frustrates me the most in my job is mediocrity. Working for that paycheck, or that pension, or those hours, or the power, and never for what’s right.

Every day I go to work in an environment that is riddled with mediocrity. Teachers who are there because they love the hours, summers off, and tenure. The coworkers I fear most are the ones who love the power their position gives them. Very few are there to teach the next generation what they need to know to succeed in life. Our children are graduating from high school knowing how to pass tests and little else.

Teachers in Special Ed. are no better than the rest. I would argue that some may even be worse. It is much too easy to abuse a child with profound mental disabilities because they CAN’T tell. It is so easy to write meaningless contracts that do nothing more than serve the interest of the school that is supposed to serve. Parents are easily badgered into compliance with the will of the school. The students never reach their full potential. How can they when classrooms are inflated by returning seniors just for the sake of numbers, forsaking a quality education?

I see the same complacency when I look to the community for services. A psych-social rehabilitation specialist needs only have a bachelors degree in a human services field. Here, people are encouraged to complete the Human Resource Training and Development program so that they can get 32 credits for 5 years work experience in order to become PSRs. What does corporate training have to do with helping a person control their behavior in order to fit into society? By the looks of the people who have done it, not much. It is the blind leading the blind.

We live in a society that is so driven by money that we have lost our ability to see what really matters in life. People go to work and go through the motions day in and day out. They go just to pick up a paycheck. How sad they are, the ones who cannot see their own hearts, the ones who do not know their own authenticity. They are so lost, and in being lost, they cannot do more than mediocre work in their lives.

Am I being too harsh? Ask someone with autism who has come up against people who get paid to help them, but fall horribly short. Ask the college student who is drowning because he doesn’t have the skills necessary to think through a problem. Ask the professionals who actually are doing the job for intrinsic motivators. Any one who has gone the extra mile to do a great job knows how frustrating it is to have to fight against the mediocracy of the people they have had to work against.

I stand high above the croud on my giant soap box and shout out to the world "I hate your mediocrity!"