Share this postSemi-RadThe Art Of Staying In Your LanesCopy linkFacebookEmailNotesMoreThe Art Of Staying In Your Laneslooking backwards to connect some dotsBrendan LeonardNov 27, 202422Share this postSemi-RadThe Art Of Staying In Your LanesCopy linkFacebookEmailNotesMoreShare--Check out my new "How To Tell One Story" online writing course here.
![I asked Downs to be my thesis advisor [CIRCLED, WITH “AP STYLE IS “adviser”” IN RED WRITTEN ABOVE] and he agreed. I wrote my thesis on peak bagging. I graduated, and went on to have an unspectacular three-year newspaper career. I quit my last newspaper job for an even lower-paying (!) nonprofit gig, feeling like a failure because I’d paid all that money for a fancy journalism degree and now I wasn’t even going to use it.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CxLU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faf615e3d-68de-4bc1-bde3-beadcb33842c_1500x1875.jpeg "I asked Downs to be my thesis advisor [CIRCLED, WITH “AP STYLE IS “adviser”” IN RED WRITTEN ABOVE] and he agreed. I wrote my thesis on peak bagging. I graduated, and went on to have an unspectacular three-year newspaper career. I quit my last newspaper job for an even lower-paying (!) nonprofit gig, feeling like a failure because I’d paid all that money for a fancy journalism degree and now I wasn’t even going to use it.")
![If I had been paying attention to Downs while I was in school, I might have noticed that he was showing us that you don’t have to pick a lane and stay in it—you can try a few different lanes and see where they go. [ILLUSTRATION OF LANES] Or, maybe I did notice.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JxUT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F947ca37b-8353-432c-9828-30a1bc459e28_1500x1875.jpeg "If I had been paying attention to Downs while I was in school, I might have noticed that he was showing us that you don’t have to pick a lane and stay in it—you can try a few different lanes and see where they go. [ILLUSTRATION OF LANES] Or, maybe I did notice.")
