The Anti-Advice Column
I recently made the not-so-great decision to bleach my hair at home, and I’d like to say it was the result of some poor advice, but unfortunately it was mostly just my poor judgement. If anyone asks, I’ll tell them it was impulsive (which, for the most part, it was), but in reality it was sort of calculated, even if I didn’t realize the planning was happening.
I knew I wanted to make a drastic hair change, but I didn’t want all of the heat to fall on me if I made a bad call. As such, I sought the advice of someone I knew would tell me what I wanted to hear. I asked Lauren Hohls what color I should dye my hair, knowing that she would suggest something out of my comfort zone. When she said blonde, I took that quote and integrated it into the persuasive essay that was building in my mind, using it as justification to color my hair although I’d pretty much already convinced myself.
Ever since my hair disaster occurred, I’ve been using the fact that Lauren advised me to do it as an excuse for the poor outcome. In reality, I probably would have made the same, or an equally poor, hair decision whether or not she had given me this advice.
But that’s the basis of all advice, isn’t it? No one actually wants another person’s, they just want backing for their own opinion. Sometimes that backing comes in the form of direct support, and other times in the form of a counter argument that forces the asker to justify why it is they want to make a certain decision.
But this advice doesn’t just come from other people. Ever since our days on the schoolyard, we’ve used tactics meant to randomize a hard decision, liking flipping a coin. We’ve all felt that sinking feeling when you see the coin land on heads instead of the tails that you had hoped to see. Sometimes it’s hard to realize it until the coin hits the floor, but when it lands on heads it becomes clear that there was a strong preference towards tails.
In the end, we all know what we truly want, we’re just trying to decide if it’s a good decision. And even when it isn’t a good decision, we’re likely to keep asking until we get the advice we want to hear. So let’s take a step out of the process. Trust your gut, because even when it leads you to a bad hair decision, it provides you with a deeper understanding of yourself. If your gut alone tells you to do something, and it ends up having a poor outcome, at least that poor outcome will be uniquely yours. It’s the kinds of mistakes based on our own instincts that are the ones we will learn from, not the ones based on other people’s insight.
You are your own advice columnist. After one school year of being the Panther Prowler’s resident columnist, I think I’m qualified to tell you that sometimes being the columnist sucks. You have to flesh out opinions on things that you didn’t even know you had a strong conviction about, and you have to put your opinions out into the world for everyone else to comment on and criticize. But that’s life, and there’s certainly more positive than negative. Being your own columnist gives you the power to gain a greater understanding of yourself and the world around you. So next time you want advice on something, take a smiling headshot in front of a blank wall, put it in black and white, place it at the top of the page, and start writing your own advice column.
