Here's a little Friday Reflection for you: Did you ever use any of the “useless” things you learnt in school in real life?

I used to think a lot of what I studied would never see the light of day again.

In my first year as a hospitality graduate, I had to learn how to debone a chicken but let’s be real, you can buy frozen deboned chicken and get it delivered to your apartment so theoretically I didn’t need to use that skill ever. (Joke’s on me though, in my last delivery I accidentally bought 4 bags of 2kg whole chicken thighs, so those skills came in handy after all.)

Some of the other lessons from school, though, have stayed with me in ways I didn’t expect: learning to understand people from different cultures, anticipating needs before they’re voiced, reading the room, and learning to take feedback. Those “soft” skills have carried me further than any technical one ever could, especially in my chosen career in sales.

And while school never taught us how to do taxes or navigate a career (which I still think should be on the syllabus), I’ve come to realise that the real value was in learning how to think - to approach problems logically, to structure chaos into frameworks, and to find patterns when things don’t make sense.

Deboning the Sales Chicken

In sales, these are the skills I find myself going back to very often:

• When working with people, aligning incentives and finding out what’s in it for them matters way more than delivering a perfect pitch

• Solving problems under time/mental pressure and finding creative solutions

• Building processes that make sense to others, and in a way that’s repeatable and scalable

  
  

We may not use the exact formulas or textbook theories anymore, but the foundation of critical thinking, empathy, and adaptability is what really translates into the workplace.

And sometimes, it comes full circle in the most unexpected ways. I recently reconnected with an industry contact over sunset drinks at Mr Stork, and we ended up talking about Game Theory, something I studied years ago and never thought I’d revisit. (If you’re curious, Veritasium has a great video on how Game Theory applies to life, watch below.)

At the end of the day, school may not have prepared us for everything, but it did shape how we think, react, and grow. The lessons don’t always show up in the form you expect, but they’re there, quietly doing their work.

👉 What’s one “useless” thing you learnt in school that turned out to be surprisingly useful later in life?