Something NONE of us need!

There is a phenomena out there you may have run into, in one form or another…

The Arrival Syndrome

You’ve probably seen it in others. It’s scarier to see it manifest in yourself.

It’s basically a state of mind where you (or someone else) has a feeling of, “I’ve arrived!” It implies that you learned what had to be learned, you applied it, and now all is done and well.

So what’s wrong with that?

Simply put, it suggests a state of mind where you don’t have to learn any more. There is no more growing to be done. Almost as if everything is smooth sailing.

And that’s the problem.

There is a saying I first heard of in German:

Um ein Meister zu werden, muss man immer ein Schüler bleiben

Translated, it reads, “To become a master, one must always remain a student.” We must continue to grow and to learn. When we stop learning, then we began to atrophy.

As a keen example, I myself have studied and use SQL for years. I once had a textbook on ORACLE/SQL from college that I reached for all the time when I started working on a contract…in 2001!

Way back in 2001, I had no clue what a LEFT OUTER JOIN was. In case you didn’t know, that’s when the values on the left-hand side of the query are required, but the values on the right-hand side are optional. Suffice it to say, LEFT OUTER JOINs are used ALL THE TIME, so…