Julia’s School Decision

During the Christmas holidays, Julia emailed me to ask for some help with a life decision.  She had just started a new job as an office manager with a psychologist.  With the job at the tennis courts and her school work, she was run off her feet.  She wanted to know whether she should quit school. 

I sent her my decision support spreadsheet but I said it was pretty impersonal.  Also I told her about the flipping a coin strategy.  What you do is you think hard about your decision and then you say to yourself that you will flip a coin to tell you whether to do it.  If it comes up heads, you do it and if it comes up tails, you don’t do it.  Then you flip the coin but before you look at the coin, you ask yourself what you really would like to do.  Then you know what you really would like to do.

I don’t think she used the coin flip idea.  But she did try to use the spreadsheet and it said she should quit the tennis courts.  She said she wasn’t going to quit the tennis courts.  So she said that she should continue with the two jobs and her school.

Then she talked to Mom and she was telling Mom about how great school was.  So both Mom and I thought she had made a decision to stay in school.

Then emailed again and said she was still uncertain.  She asked me again what she should do.  I thought about it for a while and wrote back saying she should quit school. 

Then just before she quit school she phoned Mom and said that the school was trying to get her to stay.  She talked to Dillon and he reminded her that she had decided to quit school.

Finally, she quit school and quit the tennis courts. 

So now she has just one job working as an office manager for the psychologist.