select the best answer....

We were taught to select the best answer, and there was only one way to bubble in that tiny bubble. We all used the same number pencil, why it was called number 2 is still arbitrary to me. We were all suppossed to be the same, perform the same, know the same things. Then one day when we're 22, they want us to be different.

Oh how society has lead us astray.

We've been told, if you do everything the right way, insinuating that there is only one way, that everything will work out.

Once I walked across that stage last June this all changed.

Every future employer wanted me to tell them why I was different from every other applicant, my gut reaction? YOU, society, made us all the SAME. We had standards, norms, and socially acceptable extracurricular's we were encouraged to participate in. Now all of a sudden, being different will get you somewhere?

Recently, I have realized that we teach our children from a young age that creativity is over-rated. Recently, I met a group of 5-year olds that didn't enjoy coloring. They wanted to scribble the picture to get it done as fast as they could. Essentially we have made our kids lazy, and are teaching them that creativity will get them no where in life. In actuality, we should be showing them that these things that make them different are not only the very things that make them special, but marketable.

After 10 interviews of giving the same canned answers, I realized that I needed to say something that completely wowed them. After a brainstorming session, I realized that the guy that stands on the Santa Monica Boardwalk in a suit with his resume on a posterboard is the guy that probably enjoyed coloring as a kindergartener. This entire epiphany made me realize how I will change the world. I realized that making policies isn't as lifechanging as being the one behind the scenes who must implement them.

We need better evaluation techniques, instead of seeing how well our kids can bubble in, we need something that measures how fast someone can learn a new skill and reteach it to others. Because in the real world we need to do things others do, but keep it our own. We need to keep our creativity. We need to be careful as a society that we don't turn the next generation into data packed zombies. I am a glass half full kinda gal, and I only hope that one day before it is too late, our kids are given a new outlet for their creativity, in hopes that one day when they are 22 they will be able to tell anyone that will listen, why they are special.