Almost as soon as I got to high school, I wanted to drop out.
You see, I realized that classes at college were worth more than classes at high school, so if I went to the college and scheduled my classes just right, I could be out of there by 10:30am, instead of the 2:30pm high school was getting me. Not only was high school an inefficient use of time, the classes were too easy. Who wouldn’t want to leave?
Nowadays in the US, there are numerous programs that streamline this process. However, at the time, it was pretty much unheard of. So I was definitely a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, and for six months my parents and I got the bureaucratic runaround from all levels in the school district. I don’t know why they were being so difficult about it. Maybe they thought losing their best students would pull down the testing average or something.
My parents were getting increasingly frustrated. Month after month of meetings that went nowhere, bureaucrats and administrators who kept telling us it couldn’t be done, etc.
Finally, at one meeting with the head of the school district, my mom threw up her hands and yelled at the guy in frustration. He sat there and took it, probably thinking, “Jesus Christ, how can I get this crazy woman out of here?”
When my mom’s tirade was over, the guy took a deep breath, sat back in his chair, called his #2 into the room, and said to his #2 in a low voice, “Get the forms, let’s sign this kid out.”
Boom, after six months of getting the runaround, I was a free man. We went across town and signed me up for college that same day.
(actually, the college didn’t know what to do with me either, but it didn’t take them 6 months to figure it out)
My point is that sometimes you need to ask for more than you think you can get, and sometimes you need to throw a s***-fit in order to get it.
Most of the time we try to be nice. Most of the time we just try to go with the flow, and we hope we’ll get taken care of. And most of the time, that works fine.
But sometimes you do need to be a little crazy or unreasonable. That’s okay, do what you need to do. If you don’t push the boundary, you’re not going to get what’s on the other side of it.
As the owner of the Boston Red Sox says in one of my favorite movies, “The first guy (or in this case, mom) through the wall always gets bloody, always.”
You might ask what this has to do with presentations, and it’s this: Put on your big boy/girl pants and push your ask to the edge. Be a little bit unreasonable. Don’t try to be nice, don’t try to fit in. Those are the ones who get forgotten.