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Become a Green Innovator, Not a Glamorous Entertainer
By Rubin Patterson, Ph.D
Guest Column
Let’s face it – many young
Americans would love to become celebrated professional
entertainers. Not only do such entertainers make a lot of
money, but also many don’t have any discernable special
artistic, athletic, or technical skill or talent.
Impressionable young people may look at some of these
entertainers and say, “Hey, that could be me pulling down
that high income.” My argument in this green column is a
mixture of sociological analysis and self-reflection about
my one-time, long-ago aspiration of becoming a professional
entertainer, specifically, a basketball player.
As I perceived myself, I
was as good as the athletically talented young men around
me, and many of us appeared to be as talented as the men we
were watching in the NBA; so I was pretty convinced that I
had a clear shot at the pros – piece of cake! Talk about
being way off the mark…. I realize now that I wasn’t
all that talented and the competition for the few coveted
NBA spots made my dreams of a successful athletic career all
but impossible to come true. Many adults have lived through
their own versions of such dreams of celebrity and wealth.
Fortunately, it dawned on
me that not only would I have to be “better” than the 150 or
so fellow high school basketball players in my district, but
I would have to outperform millions of other players who
were investing just as much time and effort as I was to get
one of those 300 or so NBA spots at the time. It is up to
over 400 now, but still…. Once that realization finally sank
in, I began to look at basketball as just fun exercise while
deciding to hunker down and get serious about my academic
studies and pursuing a “realistic” professional career.
A similar type of analysis
of the unbelievably long odds applies in the case of
individuals aspiring to become rappers, actors, newscasters,
and other entertainment-related professionals. Every day,
thousands of young Americans finally experience an epiphany:
“I have to seriously prepare myself to get a job!” Luckily,
not all jobs are boring or are related to what may be
considered mundane professions. Some jobs are actually
downright “cool,” financially rewarding, exciting and
satisfying professions.
Take the job of an
innovator as an example. Innovators in any professional
field generate radically new ideas and pioneer far-reaching
new products, services and production processes. Such
products as the Internet, the iphone, satellite radio and
the process of turning garbage and animal waste into
electricity are all products generated by a slew of
innovators.
It is ironic that we live
in a society highly dependent on and fascinated by science
and technology, yet relatively few understand science and
technology. The focus is too much on the world of
entertainers. As one person said to a Senate panel on
education in Washington on March 8 of this year, American
youths today are “over-entertained and distracted.”
Ohioans appear to be less
innovating than citizens of other states. I say this based
on one important metric, namely, patents. In 2008, Ohio
received only 2,227 patents from the US Patent Office. Ohio
is nearly eight times the size of Idaho, yet Ohio received
only twice the number of patents as Idaho received in 2008.
Also, the city of San Jose received nearly as many patents
that year as the entire state of Ohio.
There is a lot of money to
be made, a lot of exciting careers to be experienced, and a
lot of good to be contributed to society by individuals who
have the interest and desire to become a leading innovator
in green technology areas such as: renewable energy
generation (e.g., solar and wind), energy efficiency, energy
storage, energy infrastructure and advanced materials.
According to Governor Ted
Strickland, the Ohio Advanced Energy trade association, and
Willard & Kelsey, which is one of many renewable energy
companies in metropolitan Toledo, the clean-energy economy
is now poised to ramp up sharply.
A young person’s
commitment to becoming an innovator as opposed to becoming
an entertainer could be his or her ticket to personal and
professional prosperity. As a matter of fact, some
professional green innovators will become far wealthier than
any professional entertainer, though most will simply be
regarded as a big-time success by almost any measure.
I’m certainly not knocking
entertainers; after all I enjoy being entertained by
thrilling movies, dazzling music and exciting football games
as well. And I know that many entertainers work incredibly
hard at perfecting their craft. During my junior and senior
years in high school, I often invested over 30 hours a week
training in basketball. Looking back, obviously that was an
unwise investment.
Almost any high school
student who is disciplined enough to invest 30 hours a week
for a shot at the NBA or WNBA or as a musician could
undoubtedly prepare for a career as a green technology
innovator by taking 20 of those hours and applying them
strenuously to the study of math, science, social studies,
and the humanities. However, the student should devote the
remaining 10 hours to the basketball activities or to some
other form of intense physical exercise, so as to avoid
obesity and other possible health problems.
Young Toledoans are
fortunate to have a number of highly regarded innovators in
green technology and related social policy fields close-by
at The University of Toledo. Toledo’s youths should reach
out to such UT innovators for advice regarding a career as a
green innovator just as they would if they had access to a
local NBA/WNBA star, a well-known rapper, or other
entertainer.
Rubin Patterson, Ph.D., is
professor of Sociology and the interim director of Africana
Studies at The University of Toledo.
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