Have you ever felt like a robot at school, and that you were just being pushed through a factory? Have you ever asked yourself, “When am I ever going to use this stuff in life?”

Well, that’s because you’re right. Schools have become outdated. Did you know that schools were invented during the Industrial Age? That’s why you feel like you’re in a factory--because you are.

During England’s Industrial and Imperial Age, it was essential that everyone was churned out of school the same. That way, each person was an easily replaceable part of the machine. You could educate someone in England and send him to India, and he would be able to do his job.

However, the Victorians’ machine no longer exists, and yet we are still educating kids to become part of this non-existent machine.

Did you know that less than half the college grads 25 and younger can’t find a job of any kind, including one at Starbucks? And that many of these kids graduated with staggering debt and had to return to live with their parents?

Now you know why.

If you would like to avoid this fate, read on.

Author Daniel Pink says that in order to find a creative, fulfilling job in the 21st century (or for that matter, any job whatsoever), we need to cultivate our innate right-brained skills. The good news? This is the fun stuff that you actually want to learn: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning.

What are these things? Well, design is the ability to create beauty. Pink explains that in an age of abundance, in order for a product to sell, it must be both beautiful and useful. Do you really need another iPhone? No, but every time they come out with one that’s thinner and lighter, you may be tempted.

Story is the ability to weave facts into an emotionally-compelling tale. It used to be that information was scarce, and only the rich had libraries. Now that knowledge is easily accessible, the only way to convince people to buy your product is to weave an emotionally compelling tale. For instance, you could persuade people that buying your product will make them beautiful, sexy, and special. L’Oreal’s “Because you’re worth it” slogan has been so successful because it equates buying L’Oreal products with valuing yourself. Abercrombie and Fitch also plays upon emotion, using exclusivity and sex appeal to market their clothes. A&F has come under fire for featuring nude models in their catalogues, ironic as they are allegedly selling clothes. Most recently, after critics lambasted them for refusing to sell clothes to plus-sized people, A&F CEO Mike Jeffries shamelessly admitted that they are marketing to the “cool crowd” and have no desire to sell clothing to fat people. By cultivating this exclusive image, anyone who does fit into A&F clothes will feel special.

Symphony, the ability to see connections between disparate ideas to invent useful things, is the third right-brain skill. For instance, George de Mestral invented Velcro when he saw his dog covered in burrs and extrapolated that he could use the same hooking mechanism for clothes and shoes. Finding ways unlike things can merge to synthesize novel items and ideas is essential in an age where we have so many problems to solve.

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to see the way they see and understand the way they think. It is not the same as sympathy, when you feel badly for someone else. Instead, you are feeling with someone else so they don’t feel alone as they meander down life’s potholed path. It is important to be able to appreciate other people’s ideas and outlooks, for it is only when people feel understood that they are open to change. It is interesting to note that showing empathy can prevent doctors from being sued for malpractice. In a startling study, Dr. Wendy Levinson found that doctors who had never been sued spent more than three minutes longer with each patient than those who had been sued, and that they actively listened to patients, made orienting comments, and laughed. In other words, they demonstrated empathy, and this saved them from high malpractice fees and the hassle of battling their patients in court.

Play is the fifth right-brained skill. Long derided as trivial, play is actually integral to success. If you can have fun while you are working, it not only doesn’t feel like a chore, but also, play opens your mind to finding creative solutions to your problems. For instance, creating a silly song to memorize the Scientific Method is much more fun and effective than staring at flash cards in the hopes of absorbing information.

Finally, all of us possess a deeply human need to lead meaningful lives, so anyone who can help people find their life’s meaning will always be employed. We need to feel there is a reason for our existence, something we were meant to do. However, it is only by doggedly exploring our passions and doing what we fear most that we make an impact for our present and our future.

Our challenge as teenagers is to find the time to cultivate our right-brained skills when school swamps us with left-brained ones. It is easy to become distracted by everything that school tells us we are supposed to do, for like faithful children, we follow what society tells us will help us create a bright future. But the truth is, a college degree is worth less and less now that millions more people have one, so we need more than a degree. We need the right-brained skills that will help us solve the world’s problems and make sure that we do not create our own extinction.

The only way to create ideas to improve the future is to have a fresh

mind. We must think outside the box and do things that have never before

been attempted. Try something unimaginable. Fail spectacularly. Try again. And again. And again. Failure will pave the way to our success. We cannot be afraid to be different and to try new things. That is the only way to effectively rebuild the crumbling foundation of the dilapidated, desolate house that we have reluctantly inherited from our left-brained ancestors.