Work hard

I’ve been thinking about the tensions of what students need to be able to do, how they are being assessed, and what it really means to be “good” in an environment where Harvard is capping A grades, AI is ubiquitous, and the job market is terrible. Universities are working to frame their curricula for career readiness, and programs will be judged based on students’ incomes 4 years post-graduation. There is so much to unpack about what is happening. 

I really loved my son’s baseball coach this season. His main refrain, whether they were at the plate or pitching, was to say “work hard.” That doesn’t mean throw the perfect pitch every time, or hit the ball. It means keep trying. Don’t give up. Get back in the box after you’ve been hit. Try again after you strike out. “Do your job.” He said that sometimes too, and the job is to stick with it. Of course they need to have strong mechanics and technical skills; to throw and catch and hit. But more than that they need to be able to fight, to persevere, to be resilient. Work hard.

I am worried that current trends in higher education are rewarding technical skills, and not considering the resourcefulness and commitment needed to do well over time. We need to take the focus off of “perfect” performance, and not make doing well a competitive endeavor. We need to build community, to help students work together and trust each other. One way of thinking about this is that the AI can produce content, and the student's job is to know how to check it, or use it, or think about what should happen next, and who can help them think about it. The best leaders don’t have all the answers, but they know who does. In baseball there are kids who have great technical skills. They can throw a strike when they need to. But they don’t always know where the play is when they get the ball, they don’t always know what to do when they have to do more than execute that skill. To me this is the thing we need to teach students: how to learn what is expected in complicated environments, how to persist, how to handle messy situations, how to get things done with the support of others.  

Throughout my career, my education and expertise have been important, of course, but perhaps almost more important than knowing a specific tool or technical skill has been my ability to learn and determination to figure things out. Things are always changing and we need to be able to adjust, to get thrown in, and not be afraid to try new things. I didn’t know anything about Zoom and suddenly I had to teach teachers to use Zoom! I would never have gotten an A on using Zoom, but I definitely succeeded in helping many teachers transition their courses to a remote environment during the pandemic. This is one reason I am skeptical of the job market right now; employers may want to hire someone who ticks every box, but how are they thinking about the ability to think, to reason, to work on a team, to change course when something isn’t working? To me this is where colleges need to build their curriculum, on learning and reasoning and problem solving skills. On what to do when you don’t know what to do. 

I went to Bryn Mawr College and was inspired by Mary Patterson McPherson, our long-time president, and her words: “One purpose of a liberal arts education is to make your head a more interesting place to live inside for the rest of your life.” I put her poster up on my wall as a high school senior. It may seem idealistic, but it’s so important! What is life all about? We don’t go to school just to earn money. Hopefully becoming more informed thinkers will help us do well in the world, which includes earning a reasonable salary, but that shouldn’t be the entire goal of higher education. A solid education is the foundation for fulfilling, rich, thoughtful life. 

The kids who are the best players aren’t trying to be perfect; they are the ones who really love to play, the ones out there giving it their all even when they make mistakes, the supportive teammate helping everyone do better. Athletes want to see how well they can do, they want to win, but in the end I don’t think that’s actually why they play. They love the game, they aren’t afraid, they know they will lose sometimes, and they get back out there. They have something interesting to learn and to think about, like Mary Pat said. I hope as we continue to weather these storms around assessment, curriculum, and the job market, we won’t forget about the importance of helping students find things they are passionate about, to help them learn how to “work hard.” To me that matters more than any A.