I was walking my dog around Meikleour Woods a few weeks ago when we decided to do a bit of off-roading.
We took the well-beaten path up through the trees when we saw a smaller track leading off into the bushes.
They were dense bushes.
But it was an adventure. And that’s what I kept telling my girlfriend as I pretended we weren’t lost for the 15 minutes she gently sighed behind me, picking her way through the shrubbery.
Eventually we rejoined the original path and made it back to the car.
Schoolkids getting their exam results get told a lot about paths.
It’s why #NoWrongPath trends on social media every year.
On the face of it, the idea appears to be telling expectant teenagers not to get too upset if they don’t get the results they had hoped for.
That exam results aren’t everything.
And that’s a good message.
However, from my interactions with #NoWrongPath there seems to be a lot of folk posting about how they went to school, got straight into uni and now have a decent job.
A very linear path.
It’s almost become a time of year when people just #HumbleBrag about their success.
(Don’t worry, I fall into this trap later in the piece).
I’ll play along with my own #NoWrongPath #HumbleBrag
What I’m saying is that no 17-year-old who just failed to get into their dream university place cares that you took a year out to become a ski instructor but now earn whatever-a-year in your chosen profession, anyway.
But maybe that’s because we’ve spent the last 17 years telling that kid they need to go to that university and study for that degree in order to have their dream life.
A few “aw shucks, well exams aren’t everything” on the day they get their big disappointment probably isn’t going to undo that.
But for the sake of playing along I’ll do my own #NoWrongPath #HumbleBrag now.
I finished school at 16 with okay grades and went to the local tech college and then on to uni.
I then dropped out of uni (at the start of a recession, funnily enough).
That was followed by unemployment, escaping to America, escaping from America, back to uni and eventually landing my first full-time job in journalism at the age of 24.
Focus on the adventure
Or what about my dad’s #NoWrongPath #HumbleBrag instead?
He left school with fantastic grades and went on to study medicine.
On my way to the Court of Session wishing that the scared 16 year old boy who left school with no highers, completely disengaged from education, thinking he’d missed his chance, could see where he ended up. If today doesn’t go how you expected, remember there is #NoWrongPath.
— Ryan McCuaig (@Ryan_McCuaig) August 9, 2022
That’s when he discovered he didn’t really like sick people and dropped out.
For years he worked as a taxi driver then in a factory before eventually going back to uni in his 50s and qualifying as a fire safety engineer.
My granda’s #HumbleBrag?
He left Ireland in a boat as a teenager with no qualifications.
That transported him to borderline extreme poverty in Glasgow, where he worked in construction before finally setting up his own company decades later.
He’s now 83 and happily retired back in Ireland playing golf as many times a week as he can.
It’s not that there’s no wrong path – there’s just no path at all.
Not for most people.
Certainly not ones a 17-year-old kid should be expecting to follow.
They should be focused on the adventure, the off-roading.
And years from now when me and my girlfriend talk about that walk in Meikleour Woods – the only bit we’ll remember is that we got a little bit lost.
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