There comes a time when, even though you have been a graduate of this university, you still may need a refresher course. Or you may never have attended and are suffering the consequences. You’re not going to survive in any organized way of doing things—clubs, associations, societies, corporate organizations, political organizations, NGOs, whatever—if you’re not a graduate of the university that deals in this curriculum. You’re going to find it very hard.
First lesson: eat humble pie, and love the taste of it. That’s the main dish required to survive.
Assess the players. Some are well-meaning but will still stab you in the back given half a chance. Others gladly accept you into their inner circle but secretly undermine you at every opportunity. Just because. It is their way of self-preservation.
It’s not Terry Pratchett’s Unseen University, though you could learn from the wizards whether lazy or inept. This is a university grounded in brutal reality. Only you will know when you have passed and become a graduate. Fail, and you go back and learn again, eating humble pie along the way. Brown-nosing won’t gain you a pass. Stand your ground.
And it isn’t the University of Maximegalon either — Douglas Adams’s institution from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with its History Department ranking parallel Earths on a massive research priority list, and its Maximegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious (MISPWOSO). Forget it because Alafter the Infinite Improbability Drive was invented, the history faculty closed and the buildings were handed over to a joint faculty of Divinity and Water Polo.
No — the university we are talking about has no such departments. If you have illusions about your competency to handle these merciless organizations, then is the time to attend the University of Life, the University of Hard Knocks, or, as some call it, the University of Screw-U.
This university doesn’t have a curriculum. You will soon find the necessary curriculum for yourself or get eaten alive.
Once you get involved in these organizations, human relations will be your all-encompassing curriculum. The University of Screw-U will teach you to pick out sharks in suits, pretenders, people who act like clowns but are really leading you in, and those out to embarrass you so they can appear smart.
This university’s only graduation test is whether you can survive the people who smile while holding the knife.
If you want to stay in any of these organizations, you have to chin up and learn all you can. Otherwise, you might as well give up and walk away, or worst of all, get booted out.
