#212 - Can't I Live While I'm Young

[00:00:01] Name that tune, my friends. Do you know that song? Can you name that tune? Come on, I'll give you a second. You got this in you. Let me play it one more time. Play a little bit more. How about three seconds instead of one second?

[00:00:25] Do you know it? I'll give you a hint. Bass. What does bass have to do with that song? How about perch? How about mahi-mahi? How about salmon? Now do you know who's the artist? I'll give you a hint. I just gave you a hint. Wait a minute. I just gave you a hint. It's fish.

[00:00:48] And there's a line buried in that song that might explain a whole lot about me, your host, your friend, Andy the Sprinkler Nerd. And that is, can't I live while I'm young? Can't I live while I'm young?

[00:01:07] The song, the mystery song, the one I put you to the test just now today, the song is Chalk Dust Torture. And we're coming back to that in this episode. That's the theme, Chalk Dust Torture.

[00:01:25] If you are an irrigation professional, old or new, who designs, installs, or maintains high-end residential, commercial, or municipal properties, and you want to use technology to improve your business, to get a leg up on your competition, even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems, this show is for you.

[00:01:49] Hey, it's your friend, Andy, the Sprinkler Nerd. And welcome to the Sprinkler Nerd Show. So why this episode? Well, I was thinking of something to ring in this holiday weekend, which is Labor Day weekend, because summer is ending, and everywhere you look, people, kids, it's kind of that going back to school time of year.

[00:02:14] Kids are going back, college students are going back, parents are going to Staples and Office Depot. Well, that's not true, because Office Depot is not around anymore, I don't think. But going to Staples, Amazon, buying notebooks, backpacks, figuring out schedules, all that kind of stuff, me included.

[00:02:30] And there's this kind of feeling, hanging in the air that summer is over. And it's time to get back to learning. Except, except, is it? Because today, I want to talk about school. Sort of talk about school.

[00:02:53] Really, what I want to talk about is learning. And this might just be something that I've kept inside of me for, I'm 47, so let's say 40 years, that school and learning can be, or maybe they are, two very different things.

[00:03:16] And I think somewhere along my journey, and all of us, perhaps, there's something fucked up about this. And that is that school, oftentimes, I will try not to speak in generalities, because not everything is always true, but oftentimes or sometimes, school can really make learning suck.

[00:03:42] Which is crazy, because learning is fucking awesome. Learning is curiosity. Learning is discovering something today that you did not know yesterday. Learning is taking apart, taking something apart, because you want to know what's inside.

[00:04:05] Learning is asking a question. Learning is asking a question. Nobody around you can answer. Learning is getting your ass kicked by a problem for three days, like working on that old Rainbird MDC two-wire system that there probably aren't very many around anymore, but maybe there are.

[00:04:25] Working on that old Rainbird MDC two-wire system for three days, and all of a sudden, you're suddenly, you're like, oh, I get it. And I think that's that right there, that, oh, I get it. That's one of the greatest feelings in the world. But somewhere along the way, we took this incredible human instinct called curiosity, and it became institutionalized. We put it in a building. We divided it into subjects.

[00:04:55] We put bells between the subjects. We told you when it was okay to sit down, when you should stand up, when to talk, what to read, what questions would be next on the test. And most importantly, we told you when it was okay to read. Then we gave you a grade.

[00:05:19] And I wonder if school accidentally downgraded the meaning of learning, because it seems that learning almost became an assignment.

[00:05:36] It's like learning became a requirement, a prerequisite, something somebody else chose for you or they selected for you, something you needed to finish so you could move on to the next thing somebody else selected for you. And eventually, you might have started saying, like I often thought, I don't like learning.

[00:06:03] But really, that's not true. I wonder if that's true. Maybe you just didn't like school. Could school and learning be two different things? Maybe it's okay to like learning, but not like school. And that right there, my friends, that's what brings me back to Fish and the song called Chalk Dust Torture.

[00:06:28] I've listened to Fish since I was probably 11 years old because I grew up in Vermont in the 80s and 90s when Fish was coming on the scene. I've been listening to them for a long time. And this particular song, Chalk Dust Torture, which I don't remember what year, it was probably, if I had to guess, 1992 or 1993. Fish played on the David Letterman show. It was like one of their debut national televised debut.

[00:06:56] They played Chalk Dust Torture on the David Letterman show. And there's this great quote that I love, and it says, can't I live while I'm young? And that's exactly how school oftentimes made me feel. Why is school sucking the life out of me when learning, for the sake of learning, brings life to me?

[00:07:16] And the whole song has this feeling of being trapped in a system, sitting in chairs, being fed information, chalk dust, education becoming torture. And maybe that's why the song hits me, because I don't think I was meant for school, which is kind of funny considering both my parents were teachers. And my dad even taught teaching at Middlebury College. He was a teacher who taught teaching.

[00:07:43] This is like, it doesn't get any more educational than that. Education was everywhere. And I tried. I really did. I played by all the rules. I went to class. I did the assignments. I took the tests. I did the best I could inside the system. But I had this annoying habit, which is perhaps also a superpower. I kept asking why? Why do I need to know this? Why are we learning this? Where does this get used?

[00:08:12] What problem does this solve? Why does this matter? And I could almost never get an answer that satisfied me because it's going to be on the test is what they would say. Andy, you just have to learn it because this is school and this is the class and this is the assignment and it's going to be on the test. I'm like, fine. Okay, but why? Why? Because you'll need to know this someday. And I'm like, really? I will?

[00:08:41] I mean, all this fucking history, you're making me learn in eighth grade. I don't care. When am I going to need to know this? Where am I going to need to know this? For what? Why? Why? And I wasn't trying to be difficult. I just generally wanted to know. I needed context. I needed a reason. I needed to connect the information to something real. And looking back, now that I'm 47, I realized something.

[00:09:08] That annoying kid asking why. That is the sprinkler nerd. That's the whole fucking thing. I never hated learning. I fucking loved learning. I just hadn't figured out yet that someday I'd get to choose what I learned. And that's what I want to talk about today.

[00:09:35] Especially if you're young and you're working in the service industry. Maybe you're an irrigation technician. Or maybe you're a technician in HVAC or plumbing, electrical, landscaping, pool service, automotive, whatever. Maybe you didn't go to college. Maybe you tried college and you quit. Maybe school wasn't your thing. Maybe somebody somewhere made you believe that because you weren't a great student,

[00:10:05] you weren't particularly smart. And I want you to reconsider that. Because you might be standing inside one of the greatest universities in the world. Are you standing inside one of the greatest universities in the world? What is that university? It's called the field. Your truck is your classroom. The job site is your laboratory. Your customer is your case study.

[00:10:33] The technician sitting next to you might be your professor. And the test? Here's the test. The thing, the controller, the valve, the sprinkler. It's not fucking working. You know what I say? Figure it out. That's the test. When the shit's not working, you got to figure it out. And there's no multiple choice. There's no answer key. There's no chalkboard.

[00:11:03] You've got a pump that won't start. A valve that won't close. A compressor behaving in a weird way. A pressure reading that doesn't make sense. A landscape that's dying. A customer telling you something that doesn't match what you're seeing. Now what? What do you do? You ask questions. You take measurements. You form a hypothesis. You test it. You're wrong. So you try again. You try something else. You call somebody.

[00:11:32] How many people on your phone do you have? Or let me ask you this. Do you have someone on your phone that you know it's a valve expert? That's a pump expert. That's a fountain expert. That's a pond expert. You need these people on your phone. And that's how you solve problems. You call somebody. You read the manual. You Google it. You ask AI. You watch YouTube. You take something apart. You put it back together again. And suddenly, oh, there it is again. That feeling. I get it. I know what that is.

[00:12:01] That's learning. And you get to do that every fucking day. Think about that opportunity sitting in front of you right now. You could spend the next 10 years becoming one of the most knowledgeable people in the world at whatever you choose. And that's the important part right there. You choose. You don't understand pumps? Great. Go learn pumps.

[00:12:29] Spend six months obsessing over them. Curves, horsepower, efficiency, cavitation, pressure, flow. Take broken ones apart. Talk to people who know more than you. Become the pump nerd. Then move on. Learn electricity. Learn hydraulics. Learn soil. Learn plants. Learn weather. Learn sensors. Learn AI. Learn sales. Learn accounting. Learn psychology. Learn communication. Learn leadership.

[00:12:57] Learn how businesses actually make money. Learn whatever the hell makes you fucking curious. Go down that rabbit hole. And when somebody asks you why you're learning something, maybe the answer is simply because I want to know. Holy shit. Do you realize what a privilege that is?

[00:13:22] For probably the first time in human history, almost anything you could possibly want to learn is sitting in your pocket. The world's greatest professors. The world's greatest professors. All the books. All the videos. All the manuals. All the research papers. All the podcasts like this one. All the AI. And millions of people who know things you don't know yet. All the books. You can learn. You can learn almost anything. Anywhere. Anytime.

[00:13:52] And nobody has to give you permission. That's the part I wish I understood when I was younger. You don't need permission to learn. You don't need someone to hand you a syllabus. Just make your freaking own syllabus. You don't need someone to tell you which chapter is next. Just pick one. You don't need someone to tell you what you're capable of becoming. Just go find out. Maybe school didn't work for you. That's fine.

[00:14:22] This is your chance to unfuck that. Take learning back. Because you're not taking orders anymore. You are taking over. Take over your education. Take over your curiosity. Take over your career. Take responsibility for what you know and what you don't know yet. Especially what you don't know yet. I love saying I don't know.

[00:14:51] Because I don't know isn't the end of something. I don't know is just the beginning. I don't know lets you go find out. That's curiosity. That's learning. That's being a nerd. And I think there is something incredibly awesome about choosing to become a lifelong learner. It's almost like that's the U.S. privilege. That's the honor. And it's a choice.

[00:15:19] Every morning you wake up and you get another opportunity to know something tonight that you didn't know this morning. Don't waste that. Don't wait for your boss to train you. Don't wait for your company to send you somewhere. Don't wait for someone to recognize your potential. Don't wait for someone to hand you the next assignment. You know what? Instead, choose the assignment yourself. What do you want to know?

[00:15:48] Maybe somebody has never asked you that before. So I'm asking, what do you want to know? What are you curious about? What could you become unbelievably fucking good at if you gave yourself permission to obsess over it for the next five years? Because here's the beautiful part. There are no grades anymore. Nobody gets to give you a C- in curiosity.

[00:16:18] There's no final exam. There's only the next question and the next one and the next one. And you are the captain of your learning ship now. You decide where it goes. You decide what waters you explore. You decide how far offshore you're willing to sail. And you're going to get lost. I promise you, you're going to get lost. You're going to be confused and you're not going to know. And that's good.

[00:16:48] You're going to be wrong. And that's good. You're going to ask questions that make you look stupid. Even gooder. Because the best navigators weren't created by sitting safely at the dock. They learned by sailing. So, as everybody heads back to school this week, maybe you should go back to school too. Not to a building. Not to a classroom.

[00:17:18] Not to the chalk dust. Go back to learning. Live while you're young. Learn while you're young. And when you're not young anymore, keep fucking learning. Take back the meaning of education. Take back your curiosity. Decide what you want to learn. Then go learn the shit out of that. No grades, no permission, no chalk dust. Definitely no chalk dust.

[00:17:47] You are the captain of your learning ship. I'm Andy. The Sprinkler. I hope you sail well off into your learning adventures. And until the next episode, stay curious, my friends. We'll see you then.