Things I've Learned Over the Past Few Days

The race is not given to the swift...

Last week I “discovered” that the measure of a good professional academic is not the same as the measure of a good student. Being a good academic is about sustained effort; it is about labor.

We’ve been taught to believe there is an inverse relationship between talent and labor; the more talented a person is, the less s/he has to labor. The trick, then, has been to find a way to profit from one’s talents, which come easy. A labor intensive life indicated some failure to profit from one’s certain talents. Said failure may be due to ignorance of one’s talents and how to maximize them, some social impediment (e.g. racism, sexism), or some other barrier.

For me, that errant teaching has produced a great deal of frustration and self-doubt for some time now. There is any number of things that I simply did not pursue because deep-down I believed that if it did not come easy, it was not right. Fortunately, I have always been a very good student. Academia has always come easy to me, and I figured I was lucky federal laws mandating school attendance effectively forced me into my talent-field.

I advanced through high school and college mostly on talent alone. Somewhere in elementary school, I figured out that an 80% effort and a 100% effort earned me the same grade. Giving that extra 20% didn’t make any sense, so I stopped doing it. Now, that has to change. But the shift is not a matter of increasing my work ethic so much as figuring out the rules of the game. The extra 20% isn't in the extra thought like is was in grade school and college.  The extra 20% must go to post-creation labor.

Being a good academic is not about talent, at least not for me. Everyone here is talented. Being good at this is about polish. It is about bearing down and really exhausting every data source. It is about going back over my writing 4 or 5 times, taking others’ criticisms, and reworking every paragraph again to make every thought as clear and potent as possible. It is not about the ease of thought anymore. No one cares how long it took me to think of something or write it. They only care how meaningful and well-supported the thoughts are. My worth as an academic does not depend on my nerd-whit and debating skills; it depends on my humility and willingness to slowly work through every issue.

For years now, I have been increasingly stressed and frustrated because I did not think I measured up. I have honestly considered giving up and finding another line of work. If not for my friend, Daniel Delgado, bluntly defining my alternate plans as “self sabotage,” I would never have confronted this issue. Speed has been a large part of my self esteem. Now I realize that speed is of little use and importance. My career will be largely defined by my level of dedication to perfect each project and my courage to confront and incorporate criticism. Ironically, it seems I am among the last to learn these lessons. “God mocks proud mockers” (Proverbs 3:34).

Pray for me. I really have to a lot of growing to do.