We all have remarkable memories about the school, teachers and friends. We spent a lot of years in school. We learnt a lot.

What we have learnt in school, probably in some extend, gave us some belongings for the working life. However, not everything we learn in school is good for a work place. By applying the inappropriate approach to your work may slow down your journey to being a professional becomes a greater struggle and unnecessarily delay us from achieving our dream of being a professional.
You may have bigger dreams than just being a professional and I sure hope that some of you here will one day be a business entrepreneur.
However, being a professional must be your stepping stone to your bigger and better dream.
So it is not too late, to get back to the basic of understanding of what are the things from school are not appropriate for work and how to unlearn them to both smoothen and speed up your journey.

Here are five key attitudes you should adopt instead:

The first thing to un-learn is that if you only do what you are told, you will excel.
In School:
I know. School was hard.
But not that hard.
If you did what you were told: go to class, do the reading, turn in assignments on time, etc.--you could get As.
Initiative was not required and, in fact, was often frowned on.

In workplace:
Now - whether you work for someone else or run your own business, doing what you're told makes you average.
Not superior, not excellent... just average.
To be above average, or to achieve better than average results, you must do two things:
Do what others are willing to do, and do it better, and
Do what others aren't willing to do
Otherwise, you're just average.

We are not at school more, we don’t need to sit and wait to get assignments, we don’t want to be led like a child. We own our destiny to decide how excel you want to be.

In other word, being pro active is a key to excel. It also brings your value up to extend that you are free of being micro managed by others in workplace.

In school: In school you paid people to criticize, direct, and micro-manage you.

Teachers who get paid is having the roles & responsibility to do that to make sure you get the As.

But why all the graduated students doing this in their graduating ceremony? "Yeah …. I am free!!!!"
No more overly-controlled feeling in school: Dates, timelines, rules... not to mention the seemingly arbitrary policies and nonsensical assignments. You see graduation as the day you would finally have more freedom.

That's why now you don't feel it's fair that investors, partners, or customers can dictate what you do, sometimes down to the smallest detail.

At work, sure we don't expect someone to trust you to perform a task or service–until you've proven you can be trusted to perform that service.

Actively proving that you don’t need to be micro-managed by
Prove your performance to gain trust
Do things before you are asked to:
Communicate before you are communicated to
Answer the questions before questions are asked
Show your value before you are asked to prove your value.

Then, once you've proven your skills, if you still feel micro-managed it's your responsibility to change the situation. One way to do that is to prove that you can do things beyond the expectation.

It is to give us opportunity and environment to prove that we are graduated, we know things before it happens or in fact, know how to make things happen or not happen.

Going back with our school time, what is the time that we most expect to come ….It’s a holiday in school.

In school:
In school, holidays are the highlight of school year which everyone of us always looks forward to.
When you were in school, you may have forgotten your mom's birthday, but I'll bet you knew the exact day every semester ended and the start and end of Spring Break. And you lived for summer days.

In workplace:
Looking forward to your time off means you do the wrong work.
Try to find the favorable work to enjoy it. If not you are just working
When you are at work, it only makes sense to see weekends and vacations as the highlight of your working year, right?
Actually, “No”. If you feel you endure the workweek just to get to the payoff of the weekend, you're in the wrong business.
Simple question: Why do we only feel holidays or weekend, your time off, are the highlight of the year? – Is it that because we find our work is heavy, not enjoyable? Put it simpler ‘We are scared of going to work’
Our life will be very miserable if we have the fear at work and just wait for 94 time off of 15 days annual leave + 7 public holidays + 72 weekends to enjoy life.
Find work you enjoy; in fact, create the fun in your work, then you won't see time off as a chance to finally do something fun but as a chance to do something else fun. And the easiest way is to find the purpose of what you are doing which is beyond your benefits because it will empower you with higher motivation and greater reward that you will enjoy.
While you'll never love everything you do in your professional life, you should enjoy the majority of it.
Otherwise you're not living–you're just working.
Guess what is the next thing should be unlearnt – the fear of criticism

In school - In college you paid and professors critique your work

We has experienced the feeling of getting criticized by teacher at once in school or always been said that you should not let teacher criticize you because it means that you are not good, you failed. In this scenario, we paid professors to critique our work.

Then now that we are, the one getting paid – why is it unfair for someone – like customers, investor, or key partner – to critique our work?

Criticism is a chance to learn--and this time you're getting paid to learn. Never complain when someone pays you to learn.

Finally, you should forget that success is based on toeing the line
Say you disagreed with a professor's point of view on a particular point. You may even have been right... but the only way to get an A in the class was to parrot the professor's take on the subject. Except in rare cases, confirming and following the rules was everything.
Ex: You are always told the sky is blue. If your sky is green, you will get the bad grade.

In workplace:
Conforming only ensures that you will achieve the same results as other people.
If you want to achieve different results you'll have to think and act differently. Do your homework, think critically, and don't be afraid to create your own path.
But don't be different just for the sake of being different. Be different because it's who you are and what you believe and because it will get you where you want to go, with your integrity and your sense of self intact.

To sum up:
School isn’t where you go to get an education. Instead, school should be part of your education.
Our student’s life in the school/college, our behavior, attire, attitude, mannerisms and communication style is quite different from that of a professional working in the corporate world.
Unfortunately, school or college never did prepare us to know what to expect. So, when it is time for a student to make a transition from the school to the corporate world, it is a huge change for him. Many of us struggle with this change which can be both uncomfortable and stressful. One reason for that, is (might be) we did not know to un learn some things we learn in school. Therefore, It is important that a we should prepare ourselves well for this transition, so that the change happens smoothly and efficiently.
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Heeding this advice, let’s learn the important, unlearn the redundant and relearn the essential.