Not the same

Some things appear to be similar or even the same at first glance but upon looking at them further, we discover they’re not the same at all. That can be said about fellow columnist Dick Trail’s observations about my son’s career change at the tender age of 40. I appreciated Dick welcoming me back after a two-week hiatus and I know it was heartfelt because that’s the kind of guy he is but his comparison of son Michael’s career change at 40 to his career change at a similar age had only one similarity and that was age. Everything else about them was different.

Dick returned home to family and friends during his second career and Michael went off to Oklahoma University. Coming home for Dick meant doing something he had done before. He had worked on the family farm during the days preceding his Air Force Academy appointment and it was only natural that he return to what he knew, surrounded by people who supported him and wanted him to succeed. After that, he eventually left the farm to become a corporate pilot and then a flight instructor, all within the friendly confines of McCook, Nebraska where he had grown up and was well known.

On the other hand, Michael left for unchartered territory. The only thing he knew about the University of Oklahoma was that their football team was his favorite team. They also had the premier weather forecasting and predicting facility in the country and that’s what he wanted to do. But he had never lived in Norman, had never attended college at the University of Oklahoma and, in fact, didn’t know a single soul in the whole town or university when we accompanied him there a month ago. So where he faced uncertainty and challenge, knowing he had no one there to turn to if things went bad, Dick came back home where help and assistance were everywhere. This makes a big difference in a person’s mind, no matter the age. Most of us perform better when we are confident about our chores and doing familiar things in familiar places is key to that confidence. That’s evidently what Dick had.

Michael had no such advantage. In fact, you could even call his situation a disadvantage because no one knew his intellect and ability like his friends, family and educator s that he had surrounded himself with during the first 20 years of his adult life. But now they were all gone and he had to prove to a whole new group of new people what he had already proven beforehand to the first group. Since the first groups were family and friends, much like Dick’s return home, the second group was just the opposite. He won’t be given the benefit of the doubt at OU. People won’t excuse him when he screws up because they won’t know it’s an incidental mistake instead of a pattern of behavior. They won’t expect him to succeed like his family and friends all did. He will not be rewarded just because of who he is because at OU, unlike Russellville, he’s a nobody to everybody there and he’s going to have to prove through his attitude, behavior and work ethic that he’s worth keeping.

So Michael faces many challenges and potential bumps in the road that Dick didn’t face when he returned home at 40 to begin his new career. I have faith in him to achieve success in the face of low expectations, low expectation that Dick didn’t have to contend with when he started a new journey at age 40.

Sometimes we think things are very similar if not the same until we dig a little deeper into the differences involved which leads us to discover that things aren’t the same at all. Dick Trail and Michael Hendricks both pursued a different career path when they were 40 but nothing else about their experiences are the same.