“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?"

“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?"

She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.”
            

         ~ George Carlin

Greetings everyone – my apologies for long absence of the Morning Mojo!  Your humble author had taken on a few freelance writing projects that robbed him of the proper time… alas, I hope a few good quotes in the morning can get back to helping energize and inspire some awesome results.

Today’s quote, obviously tongue in cheek, from the late (and simply brilliant) George Carlin is funny – however sometimes very  poignant truths are hidden in humor.  This quote made me think about our role as advisors and educators.  Do we exist to solve our students problems?  Or; do we instead exist to teach them how to solve problems on their own?

I lean towards the latter.  Mirroring the parable, “give a man a fish you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him life”, let’s encourage our students to learn to be self-reliant.  Instead of babysitting a student on JoinMe while they do their homework, let’s give them some goals and benchmarks to accomplish on their own and schedule a call-back time to check in.  Keep in mind what an awesome responsibility we’ve been entrusted with; we do not merely “get students to graduate” we prepare them to be successful, productive and well-employed members of society.

The coolest thing?  If we do our jobs well, we really do make the world a better place.