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Hidden Curriculum VIP – Point of View

Hello this is A.J. Welcome to the point-of-view stories, our grammar practice stories, for this month’s VIP Lesson. Let’s get started. Same story, different versions.

Now the first is going to be happening now, as if we’re with Carol as its happening.

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So, Carol has always been a good girl. Most of her life she has been a good girl. During most of that time period, she has been a good girl. In fact, in school she always got straight A’s.

However, one day she goes to work and, see, she had always been a good employee too and followed the rules all the time, but her boss calls her and talks to her and her boss says “Carol, I’m sorry. You are good, but you’re unremarkable and so we have to cut costs and we have to let you go.”

That’s right, she gets laid off. Carol gets laid off from her job and because of that, of course, she has no money and no job, but that’s not the worst thing that happens to her.

The worst thing is that she feels like a huge failure.

Remember, she had always been a good girl. She had always gotten straight A’s. She had always followed the rules. She thought that meant she would always be successful, but it didn’t. So, of course, she cries and she cries after getting laid off. She cries and she cries and she goes home and cries some more. She cries and cries and cries for days and weeks and months and she beats herself up.

She beats herself up by saying lots of bad, critical things to herself. She says “Oh, I am so stupid. Oh, I’m a failure. Oh, something’s wrong with me.” And she feels a lot of self pity. She feels sorry for herself. She says “Poor me. Poor me.” Well, she bests herself up and she pities herself for 27 long months. Cries and cries and cries every single day.

So, finally, one day she gets out of the house and she goes to a bookstore and as she’s browsing through the bookstore looking through the books, she sees one that stand out.

She notices it. The title is Linchpin and the author is Seth Godin. Well, it looks very interesting, so she buys it and she reads it and the book is very different than anything she has read before.

You see, the book is all about breaking the rules, about how to be irreplaceable and remarkable and it tells her to do the opposite of everything she used to do. Instead of being normal, it tells her to be abnormal. Instead of following the rules like a good girl all the time, it tells her to break the rules, intelligently, in order to be excellent, remarkable, and different. Instead of not standing out and being the same as everyone else, it tells her to stand out, to be noticed, to be remarkable and amazing.

Well, Carol decides that this is the key. This is the secret to her future success and so she starts doing all the things that Seth Godin recommends in his book. She starts breaking the rules. She starts being different, creative, interesting.

The first thing she focuses on is her job hunt; looking for a new job. Instead of doing the same thing as everybody else, sending out resumes and applications and passively waiting, she, instead, takes initiative. She does a lot of different things, different than what other people do.

She directly calls managers, skips the Human Resources Department completely. She sends videos to managers where she talks about herself and sells herself. She sends audios. She does all kinds of interesting, different things and she absolutely does stand out.

She gets tons and tons of interviews and, eventually, she chooses an excellent job.

Even better, she continues to follow this philosophy at her new job. She breaks the rules in order to be excellent and amazing and she indeed becomes irreplaceable and remarkable at her new company and because of that, she gets lots and lots of raises and, eventually, she becomes the CEO of the company. She has a remarkable life and she is indeed irreplaceable.

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That’s the end of our first version, now our second version.

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Well, since she was very, very, very, very young, Carol has always been a good girl.

She’s always been a good girl. She has always followed the rules. She has always done what her parents told her to do. She has always tried to please her teachers. She has always tried to please her parents. She has always tried to please anyone in authority.

In school, she always got straight A’s. From the very beginning until she finished school, finished university, she has always gotten straight A’s. She has always followed the procedures, the correct procedures. She has always followed the company policies at her jobs. Whenever she got hired at a new job, she always got the policy manual and read it from the front to the back and then she has always followed the company policies and the company rules.

She always been a good, obedient employee. She has always been a good, normal girl and a good normal woman. And she has always thought this was the key to her success. She has always thought that if she just followed the rules, it was a good girl then she would always have success.

She is always trusted the experts or bosses or parents or teachers. She is always obeyed whatever they said and that’s why it was such a huge shock when she got laid off. It was shocking to her when her boss said: Carol you are good, but you are unremarkable.

Therefore we have to cut cost and we have to let you go we have to fire you, Carol, was laid off. It was the first biggest failure of her life. She was shocked. She couldn’t understand it.

It didn’t make sense to her. She cried and she cried and she cried. She went home and she cried and she cried. Then every day she beat herself up, she criticized herself constantly that bad things to herself. I’m stupid, something’s wrong with me I don’t understand, she pitied herself. She felt a lot of self-pity.

She felt sorry for herself. That poor me, poor me. I’m so unlucky. She did this for 27 months 27 months self-pity, beating herself up.

Finally she went to a bookstore and she saw a book called linchpin by Seth Godin, it looked interesting so she bought it she read it cover to cover completely. She read all of the book and the book was about very different ideas than she had ever heard before. It told her not to be a good girl all the time. The book recommended that she break the rules intelligently in order to be remarkable and irreplaceable in order to be amazing, it told her not to be the same, but instead to be different.

Well, she decided to follow the ideas in the book and she first use these ideas with her job search. She took initiative with her job search. She didn’t just do the same thing as everybody else, she try new strategies, different strategies, she broke all the normal rules of jobhunting and it worked.

She got lots and lots and lots of interviews and eventually she chose one great job at a great company and then at her new job. She continued to be remarkable and irreplaceable. She continued breaking the rules intelligently in order to be excellent, in order to be different, in order to be amazing. Because of that she got lots and lots of raises, and eventually she became the CEO of the company, a top executive. She indeed became remarkable and irreplaceable. ​
All right, that’s the end of our second version, on to version number three into the future, as usual. Imagine we’re dreaming. Imagine we are imagining this. That it might happen.

That it will happen in the future. Somehow we know what’s going to happen in the future. Here we go.

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In the future there will be a woman named Carol and Carol, you know, she’s gonna’ be a good girl and she will always have been a good girl. For her whole life, she will have been a good girl. She will always have followed the rules.

In fact, she will have been a constant straight A student. She will have always gotten straight A’s in school. Her whole life, never a B or a C or a D or an F and she will always have been a good employee who followed the rules all the time. That’s why it’s gonna’ be a huge shock when she gets laid off one day in the future. (Of course, “gonna’” means going to – future. We use it in normal speech a lot.)

So she’s gonna’ be really shocked the day she gets laid off from her job. Of course, she’ll lose her income. She won’t have a job anymore, but that’s not the worse shock for her. The worse shock is she’ll feel like a failure for the first time, right? She will have followed the rules all her life and yet, still, she’ll have this big failure.

Her boss is gonna’ say to her “Carol, you are good, but you’re unremarkable; nothing special. We have to cut costs. So, therefore, we have to let you go. We have to fire you.” Now she’s gonna’ cry and cry and cry and cry. She’ll go home. She’ll cry and cry and cry some more and then for weeks and months she’ll beat herself up. She’ll say bad things to herself. Criticize herself constantly.

And for months and months she’ll feel a lot of self pity. She’ll feel sorry for herself. She’ll say “Poor me. Poor me. Poor me.” Until, finally, after 27 months, she’ll finally do something. She’ll go to a bookstore and she’ll see a book called Linchpin by Seth Godin. Something about that book is going to interest her. It’s going to standout for her.

She’ll notice it and she’ll buy it and take it home and read all of it.

This book is gonna’ have amazing ideas that are so different than what she used to think. The book is gonna’ tell her to break the rules, not follow the rules. The book is gonna’ tell her to be remarkable, not normal. It’s gonna’ teach her how to be remarkable and irreplaceable.

She’s gonna’ be excited. She’s gonna’ realize it’s the key to her success, so she’ll follow all of these ideas with her new job search. She’s gonna’ take initiative. She’s gonna’ aggressively go after new jobs and she’s gonna’ use tactics and methods that are very different than normal job search tactics. She’ll break all the rules of job searching and because of that she’ll stand out. Because of that she’ll get lots and lots and lots of interviews.

And after having a lot of interviews, she’ll finally decide and she’ll choose one really great new job, but she’s not gonna’ stop there. No. She’s going to continue being remarkable. At her job she’s gonna’ break the rules, very intelligently, but she’s gonna’ break rules constantly in order to be excellent; in order to do an amazing, incredible, remarkable job.

Because of that she’s gonna’ get lots and lots of raises and promotions until, eventually, she’ll become the CEO of the company; the top executive of the company. She will indeed become remarkable and irreplaceable and very happy too.

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And that’s the end of our third and final version of the story.

Now you’ll notice that in real English the times and the verb tenses and things like that, they can change, right, even in the middle of one story. So even though one story has a basic time, sometimes it changes, right? I might say she has always been a good girl and then I’ll switch to the regular past when something specific happens. That’s normal.

That’s how we establish meaning in English with grammar.

See, you don’t need to worry about the grammar terms. You don’t need to remember past perfect, present perfect. That’s not important. What’s important is you have to feel and understand the meaning, right? Grammar shows meaning. It gives you a feeling for the time periods, especially, that are happening. Something’s happening in the past, did it happen specifically at one time or over a period of time.

See, that’s the feeling you want to get. So with these stories you just listen to them. You notice the meaning. You notice how the times change. You don’t think about the grammar rules. Just listen to these stories every single day for a full month. Then the next month you’ll get a new one and do the same thing again and after several months you’re feeling for grammar in English will get stronger and better and after a few more months you will actually begin to use it more correctly and speech without thinking at all.

It will happen automatically. That’s the power of these stories and the mini story too.

All right, so listen to this every single day and listen to the mini story every single day and the other ones too.

All right, have a great day and a great month. See you again soon, bye-bye.