How a chest of drawers falling on me taught what a classroom can’t

After graduating from high school, I watched as my friends went off to college. I was broke and unable to support myself, so I joined the Navy. At the time, higher education represented privilege and status to me. Due to my inability to generate a stable income, I could not afford to go. As someone who had an entitled attitude and thought I deserved what they had, I became resentful of my friends whose parents paid for their education.

Little did I understand back then that sitting in a classroom passively absorbing a lesson doesn’t teach the lessons real life gives us. What’s funny is that I learned this concept one night years back pretending to go to sleep, but over time I somehow forgot.

When I was six years old, each evening before I went to bed, my Mom would take my most prized toys and put them in the top drawer in a 12-chest set of yellow drawers. I would then spend hours fantasizing how to open that top drawer, as just because it was bedtime, I had plenty of energy.

I decided to stop fantasizing and create an action plan on one of those many sleepless nights. I was so excited about my master strategy and thought surely in no time I would be cuddling with my favorite doll, playing out a story with her, awake all night, and lost in my perpetual state of bliss.

Here’s how this masterful idea took hold. Since I was not tall enough to reach that top drawer, I figured that the bottom drawer must have been put there on purpose to give me a literal leg up.

So after being told it was bedtime by my parents, I began my grand idea. I slowly crept, climbed out of bed, and started tip-toeing toward that chest of drawers. I slowly opened that bottom drawer full of eager anticipation for the fruits of my labor. I gingerly placed my feet inside of the bottom drawer, excited at the thought of that mountain of toys that were finally within just seconds of my reach. But to my dismay and disappointment, and before I could reach toward that prized top drawer, the chest started to lean toward me. Slowly I fall back, flat on my head. I remember hearing a loud thump, and all went black.

The rest of that evening was a blur. According to my parents, the paramedics came to our house. My next memory is seeing a man who lifts me onto a stretcher and takes me in an ambulance. I go to the hospital emergency room. My head required a few stitches. It was not the evening I had expected all those nights spent strategizing.

Not surprisingly, those toys were never in that top drawer again. I don’t remember where my Mom and Dad put them next, but what I can say is that I never used a bottom drawer to get to a top drawer again. I now understood the law of physics without ever stepping foot in a classroom, but instead stepping my foot in a drawer.

This experience is a good metaphor for life. It’s by doing that we learn. Some might see what happened that evening with that chest falling on me as a massive fail, but I needed that experience to knock me unconscious. Why? Because it taught me what not to do, which is a crucial aspect of the human experience.

We must try getting in that arena every day and simply try new things. It’s why you cannot learn sitting in a classroom memorizing test questions, but more so by practicing hard things.

This concept of doing is why as a Navy public affairs officer, I’m constantly honing my skills in writing, graphic design, video editing, interviewing, social media marketing, and capturing imagery. How can I set the example for my enlisted communicators if I’m not willing and able to do the same tasks they do? It’s also why I feel passionate about bringing skilled trades into the education system.

If it doesn’t work out when doing something new, try doing it another way, but I strive now to stay resilient and not give up.

After all, a life without these “fails” is not worth living.