The Homework Doesn't Guarantee Anything

“The homework doesn’t guarantee anything, with luck it gives you a shot at something real.” -Bryan Cranston


If I do blank then blank will happen. Cause and effect. An immutable law of the universe. It’s difficult to tell if we’re hardwired this way or we’re all just given this frame of thinking the day we start Kindergarten. From day one on you’re told to pay attention and in return you will be successful. Study and you’ll get good grades. Get good grades and you’ll get to go to college or get into a competitive job. And you know what? This line of thinking serves you well. You should believe it.

Then one day you graduate. You move on from the classroom, teachers, and the cookie cutter cause and effect you’ve been trained on. You don’t realize it at first, but something changes. You get a job and work really hard, the same way you learned in school, knowing you’ll be rewarded. Maybe, you’ll even get a raise.

Then you get passed up for the raise. And then it happens again. And again.

Turns out, you can do everything right on paper and things still don’t work out. That immutable law turns out to be much more bendy than you previously believed. The real world isn’t the classroom, and at first it may feel very unfair, but it’ll be okay. The universe has not betrayed you, reality is just a bit more nuanced. The only guarantee you have is by not doing the homework nothing will ever get better.

Keep showing up, the harder you work the luckier you’ll get.