Smart people don’t go to FP

In my case, I never thought about it. I never had that dilemma. I don’t even remember that we were given talks about the options of vocational training. Surely we were given some, but since I “wasn’t dumb,” I didn’t pay attention. Our parents’ generation had a mix of those who had been able to get into college and those who had not. And if there was one thing they had in common, it was that they believed that this was their job: to give their children higher education in order to have a “good future”. They did not know then that it would turn out badly for them and that many of us, proudly holding our university degrees, would be chained to unskilled jobs without being able to access professions in which the older ones had many years left to retire and the resumes of the younger ones were piled up in drawers that would never be opened. We were faced with this reality and the mentality had to change. Last week a national newspaper published a report on the new generation of vocational training students. And lo and behold, they are not stupid. Surprise. They are young people who have finally had the option to choose, and have opted for a path of specialization that requires an eminently practical approach to extremely necessary trades in our society. The fact that these jobs are well valued must be a joy for all of us who are going to be users of some or many of them at some point.
What saddens me is to think how much frustration we would have been spared if we had had the opportunity to freely choose that path. Studying a university degree is not the most complicated thing in the world. There are some that require a great deal of effort and dedication, and there are others that are easy to get through without any problems if you put in a minimum of effort. In my particular case, the career helped me to acquire general knowledge and to surround myself with colleagues who contributed to my personal and intellectual formation. But what I have been learning about the profession has been based on working, trying and making mistakes and learning from them. And by continuing my education in the areas that really interested me. Professional training has shown us that those who have an interest in something in particular and can train themselves doing what they are interested in will be as valuable to society as those who have all the university degrees in the world.

I comment in my talks on the speech he gave us on the first day, in which he urged us to make decisions. At a festival sometimes things can’t be consulted. Working at ungodly hours, each one in a different part of the city, at breakneck speed, you have to face new situations and be confident enough to decide, even at the risk of being wrong. But he told us that we could be wrong. That we should use our judgment, that we should take risks. And if it went wrong, we would work it out. I had never before been given that level of freedom and responsibility (which would later be so useful to me in Silicon Valley). That responsibility and that trust placed in us made us great, even though we were just kids. I can never be grateful enough for everything I learned in those offices in the Kursaal and Victoria Eugenia. The moments spent on the beach and on the different stages with the photographers, the laughs with my boss and my colleagues, our meals, the backstage, meeting who was then my crush, Jamie Cullum, at the Trini, sharing with Mitxel Ezquiaga the interview he did with the great Paolo Conte in his dressing room, printing hundreds of accreditations for the concert of Laboa and Dylan on the beach. When I had to quit, due to other work commitments, I was not able to go to see the concerts because I could not conceive of not being part of that great machinery of enjoyment. Now I do go, happy for everything they continue to achieve year after year, in a festival that is, in addition to a celebration of jazz and other music, a space for connection, cultural democracy and enjoyment. Forgive me for getting emotional, but it is inevitable when you are one of the Jazzaldi girls. It marks you forever.