Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Making a Living

What do you do for a living?

This is an icebreaker, form of introduction, status determiner, sense of camaraderie, or a way to kill an awkward moment but is it a good question?

Here is one problem I see with this question; it only addresses a very small part of our lives.  Let me break it down in mathematical terms, there are 24 hours in a day and only 1/3, or 8 are spent at work for only 260/352 days for approximately 40 years of a life average of 80 years (I rounded up slightly to make it easier to compute).  Therefore, our working lives are:

1/3 of each day * 260 days * 40 years =
4699.2 days of a 28,480 day life time
or 16.5% of a lifetime

I was shocked by this math!  I thought the answer to that question was one to aspire towards.  IEPs are designed to answer this question at the age of 14 with the work prior and after focused on helping the student secure "a living"  All the hours the IEP teams I have been a part of should count for more of a person's life than 16.5%.  It is time that I ask a better question,

How do we design a life?


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