Notes on teaching children some key life lessons

Deborah Williams remembers the jobs she had as a teenager as valuable experiences

Youth upload their CVs at an internship fair. Deborah Williams notes that the jobs we do when we are young teach us valuable lessons. Victor Besa /The National

The summer before my senior year at college, I worked the early morning shift at a convenience store near the campus. One of my tasks was compiling the sections of the weekend newspapers, which in the United States tend to be full of inserts and advertising circulars. Inevitably, my hands and face got smeared with newsprint; I ended up looking a bit like an orphan from the cast of Oliver!. Working at the convenience store was not, itself, particularly educational – you don’t learn much stuffing flyers from a hardware store into newspapers – but in hindsight, I realise that I learnt a great deal. These lessons weren’t glamorous or exciting. No one gave me a certificate or a rise. I learnt that people – even those who attended the same college I did – will treat you badly just because they think you’re an unimportant “townie”. I learnt that you have to show up, even if you’re tired, bored, or hate the smell of newsprint. Over the course of my working life, I’ve worked as a grill cook, babysitter, indexer, usher, editor, bartender, secretary and waitress, and even when they were grim, these jobs offered what are euphemistically called “life lessons”, although those lessons sometimes took a while to reveal themselves. Waitressing, as it happens, is great preparation for parenthood: you learn to do almost everything one-handed, as well as cope with being spilt on, yelled at and harassed by people who are hangry (angry because they’re hungry).

When I took these jobs, I wasn’t interested in “life lessons”; I just needed the money. My teenage jobs funded such essentials as Bonne Bell LipSmackers lip gloss, and the odd jobs I did as an adult in graduate school funded real essentials, like rent and food. Early in my graduate school career, I remember wailing to a professor that I didn’t think I was smart enough to finish my degree, and he said – rather cynically – that it wasn’t about being smart. “Finishing is an act of will,” he said. Brains will only get you so far – you have to do the work. It’s not the same kind of work as folding newspapers, but in both instances, I had to keep going, even when I wanted to throw everything across the floor and make a dramatic exit.

I suppose my talk of low-wage labour makes me sound like the old granny who talks about how back in the day she walked to school barefoot through the snow, but what I’m wondering about is where kids, especially in a place like Abu Dhabi, learn about work. Not the sort of work where you sit in your spiffy office saving the world and making lots of money, but the sorts of jobs that offer the eye-opening perspective that only comes from being on the other side of the service economy. Yes, many of us are lucky enough that our children don’t “need” to work in order to have pocket money, but perhaps these are precisely the children who most need the experience.

In Abu Dhabi, where even at Ikea, home of DIY, people have to be reminded to clear their own trays in the cafeteria, how do we create opportunities for teenagers to learn what developmental psychologists sometimes call “grit”, which they define as a combination of resilience, persistence and independence? Playing on a sports team might help develop this skill, but what if your child isn’t the sporty type? Volunteer work, perhaps? Easier said than done, given the rules that govern volunteer organisations here.

We talk about wanting our children to be responsible members of society but how does that happen if all their experiences are organised for them by teachers, coaches or parents? “Life lessons” can’t be curated or managed, I’m afraid; they’re what you learn when you’re crabby and tired and your feet hurt, but you still have to navigate the lunch rush with a smile on your face or fold another 200 newspapers.

Deborah Lindsay Williams is a professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi