Turns Out We All Suck At The Same Stuff

Currently Listening to: American Slang by The Gaslight Anthem

For the past hour or so I've had the "opportunity"to read through a bunch of application and reference forms for potential Know Sweat interns. I actually enjoy the process quite a bit but it can get a bit tedious and my personal track record is that I'm average at best at judging character from sheets of paper. Whenever our team finally has what we affectionately call "The Selection Show" to pick them, my hope is that I'm not too high or too low on somebody everybody else feels strongly about in the opposite direction. That happened once, and I made the final call.

And I was wrong.

That being said, anytime you ask people to evaluate others on a 1-5 scale you end up with people who are all 5's and people who don't seem to have any areas of weakness. It gets comical to me how similar everything looks and sounds after a while. This year I made some notes and here's what it seems like every college student can be described as.

They struggle in stressful situations, seem to lack some self-confidence and could really benefit from more life experience.

Hmmmm, well from that description it sounds like everybody I know. Clearly we once again did not get any former Presidents, CEO's of major corporations and no retired military leaders. Of course they struggle under stress and could benefit from more experiences. By the way, they are college students!

Now please understand, I get what we are saying here but when I think about it these are issues we are going to wrestle with for a long time. The polar opposite of this person is stress-less, over confident and has seen and done everything. Quite honestly that person would annoy me. More than anything.

So here's my thought about all this rambling. Here's to thinking about some people we want to invest in. How can we help them get better in these 3 areas. We all know somebody and we can do something to encourage them or spur them on. And for us personally, what are you doing to better yourself in those 3 areas? Because I know me and I could always improve at handling stress, being a bit more confident and challenging myself to attempt new adventures.

Here's to changing.