Get out there!
My son was putting up an impressive fight about having to go outside and help his dad with chores instead of his preferred activity, reading a book.
The fresh air will be good for you, I said.
You might learn something, I said.
You get to hang out with your dad, I said.
And then, finally: GET OUT THERE. THIS IS LIFE. LIFE IS WORK, AND YOU NEED TO FIND A WAY TO ENJOY IT.
Maybe a bit dramatic, I'll concede, but I stand by it. So much of life is simply hard work, and it doesn't have to be seen as pointless drudgery, a necessary evil to get through so that we can enjoy the results of our labor. Too often, when we start a project, all that we are envisioning is the outcome, and we forget to account for the work that will happen along the way. I plant a garden in the spring, dreaming of a delicious home-grown tomato but forgetting about the hours of weeding. I assign a project to my students, thinking of them presenting all they have learned, not accounting for all the guidance that will be needed along the way. I write down a few thoughts, imagining that polished essay will come from them, not worrying about the editing, researching, or organizing process. All those visions of end products are really such a small part of the entire enterprise, a tiny slice of the pie chart showing the big picture of effort form beginning to end.
My students also fall into this fallacy from time to time, asking, "Why do we have to learn the equations if we can just use the Excel functions?" or "Why are there reflection questions on every single case study?" or, moaning, "I did the wrong homework problem so all that work was pointless!" And I get it. I do. We are limited creatures, so repetition or work that doesn't yield visible results - like a number in a gradebook - can be frustrating because it doesn't feel efficient. Personally, this was an especially hard lesson for me to learn when I had small children and did household tasks over and over with no end in sight, and often watched what I had worked for get undone in a matter of minutes - a basket of clean, folded laundry tipped over, a lovely meal smushed and smeared on a high chair, or muddy shoes running over a just-cleaned floor. Efficiency was nonexistent, and I was frustrated often.
Minimize inputs and maximizing outputs is an economic principle of optimization, one that is built from from the foundational equation of worth = benefits - cost. Sometimes, our resources of time and energy feel scarce, and we forget that humans do not live and die by economic principles. What I try to tell my students, and my children, and myself, is that the work that goes into something should be counted as a benefit, not a cost. The work is the integral structure that upholds the final result. If we skip the work and jump straight to the result, there is nothing there to support the outcome, no habits, practices, knowledge or investment that were earned and learned along the way. The work is both vital and formative.
The work is sometimes not pretty or fun, but I encourage you, as I did my son, to change your mindset. Find a way to enjoy the work, accepting the roller coaster of successes and failures along the way. Remember that work can be counted as a benefit, and that work and learning go hand-in-hand. When you are in the messy middle of a project, don't take the easy way out by cutting corners or seeking quick fixes. If you do that, you will have the result but not the infrastructure to support it. The work upholds the outcome, so GET OUT THERE.
