Tag Archives: standard

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Standard perceptions

Disclaimer: this post probably has nothing to do with what the title implies. One of the memories of being a teenager that stand out to me is the occasion of where I learned to drive. I remember studying for my driver’s test (the written portion), failing it and then passing it the next day when I went again. Driving for me was somewhat of a birthright. As the oldest child, my parents were anxious to have another driver to shuttle, run errands, and occasionally to help on some road trips. However, in order to get full driving privileges I had to learn how to drive a standard transmission. Anyone who has learned how to drive a car with a standard transmission knows that it is truly a process of jerking and stopping. Driving up a hill is one of the hardest concepts to learn because it requires a certain level of finesse. You need just enough gas to get up the hill and the clutch for control while not running into the car in back or in front of you. I chuckled when I saw this picture because while driving a standard transmission is a great thing, it is not a test of manhood. Driving a stick shift car is something that seems to be fading into obscurity. I meet more and more people who have no clue on what needs to happen in order to competently start and drive a stick shift. I find that driving a stick shift has helped me be able to multi task at times. Maybe not in a good way. The truth of the matter is that stick shifts require practice in order to drive. Period. However, it’s a great skill to have because you never know when it might come in handy.

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Small Stuff

In the past few weeks, I’ve had conversations with women in which they talk about a man’s good traits and bad traits but then say that something that he does or believes in is an automatic deal breaker for them and thus, he is no longer under consideration for anything other than a distant friend. I believe in standards. I have them and for the most part, I stick to them. But the common theme that has been the deal breaker in conversations with numerous women is that the man does not have a college degree or above. The reasons given for this blatant disregard for anyone who doesn’t meet this standard is that there will be nothing to talk about if the man isn’t educated. In today’s society, so much weight is placed on where you went to school, what your grades were, what your degree was in, if you finished college. This has happened to the extent that there are people who honestly think that going to college is an indication of intelligence. Maybe it’s the homeschooler in me, but I honestly think that having an education is not an indication of intelligence at all. At all. These days you don’t even have to be smart to make good grades. I’m definitely a witness to that. You just have to know the system and how to find the right resources to get the information that you need. While I don’t necessarily consider myself “educated,” I probably somewhat fit the criteria for that particular term. I can honestly say that the many of the smartest and most intelligent people I know do not have college degrees. People who think outside the box tend to make more money and are more successful than those who don’t. Education is a box. My point in saying all this is that you miss out on a lot when you immediately disregard someone because they don’t meet a particular educational requirement. College is honestly not for everyone and there are plenty of people who have made millions without stepping foot inside a college classroom. It’s about the desire to learn and the ability to find the resources you need to get where you want to go. These days, almost everything you would get in a college classroom is accessible on some level through the internet at a much lower price. There are so many better things you can use to screen potential significant others but I don’t think that highest education level should be one of them.