We live in a world that is highly results oriented. The grade, the job review, how much money we earn, are you a starter on the team or a reserve, did you make the team, all are evaluations we seem to make in our society to determine both levels of success and of effort. We see articles about ‘tiger moms’ who will force their children to succeed at all costs, or people who make value judgments on the worth of a person by results based on competition and not on who that person truly is. All those measures tell us much about a person at one level, but not at all levels.
Another method of evaluation is the old, “keeping up with the Joneses” measuring stick. How do I compare or how do my children compare with those of my neighbor? One thing I have learned over the years, one thing that was taught to me by raising a child with special needs, is that most of these measures truly do not matter. They say little about who a person is or what that person’s true worth is. Defining success as being faster or stronger or more attractive or more academically successful is really using definitions that are really fleeting measures. Speed and strength disappear with age and injury. It is the truly rare individual that is intellectually more gifted in every area than everyone else. A DaVinci or a Galileo or an Einstein possibly fit this role, but even so, they are the rare exception. But even so, those evaluations change – did you know that early in Einstein’s life, there were concerns that he may have been ‘slow’ because he did not begin to speak until a couple of years later than other children when growing up?
So what I have learned is the need to try and evaluate everyone based on who they really are. Is this person, no matter what is happening, truly a ‘good’ person? Does that person want to do the best that they can? Does that person care, to the best of their ability, about others? Does that person, to the best of their ability, have empathy for others? Bottom line, what kind of person is that person at their core?
So, what does this have to do with working hard or hardly working? Let me tell you the story of 2 classes. As many of you know, my son, Ian, is deaf and has cerebral palsy. He also just completed his first year at the local community college. For the most part, his grades have been pretty good. However, he had 2 classes where he had, for lack of a better description, grade anomalies. He failed an Algebra class and received a D in an English Composition class.
In the algebra class, we saw it coming. Ian was cocky about algebra. Now mind you, he usually is a good math student. However he believed he ‘knew this stuff’. Wrong. He decided there wasn’t any need to worry about studying for that class or doing the optional homework. You see he knew that stuff. He dug a hole that, by mid-semester, he was frantically trying to dig himself out of. Guess what, it didn’t happen. Now, his other classes that semester were all ‘A’ grades, but he put the effort into studying. We were irritated with the ‘F’, to say the least.
In the English Composition II class, Ian received the D. But he knew from the minute he started he was going to have to work, and did. He worked hard, and you know what, we saw significant improvement in his writing skills during the course of the course. And we were proud of that D.
So what is the difference? The difference was the difference between working hard and hardly working. You see, he had the capability to be successful in the algebra class and chose not to use his skills and abilities. He did not use his abilities or put forth the effort. He did not attempt to live up to who he is or who he can be. These are core issues to who you are as a person. This is the ‘hardly working’.
In the English Composition II class, Ian worked hard. He pushed himself to be as good as he could be. We saw the effort and how hard he worked trying to better himself. He worked hard to become better at something and strengthen himself. We saw that success, the improvement in skills as the semester went on. He was trying to be the best he could be. Whether the grade would have been an A or a D, it did not matter. What mattered was the effort he was putting into it. That is something to be proud of and is the ‘working hard’.
So what happens in the future? Ian will take both classes again. Probably in the fall semester to get them cleaned up. I don’t think, ‘hardly working’ will be an issue for algebra again. He identified the issue and we’ve talked it through. Ian learned from it. Now he will work to correct the algebra. In English Composition class, he will take it again as well, and keep working hard to improve an area of weakness for him. I am not worried. I won’t be judging him against someone else or someone else’s standard. I will be judging him against himself. I know he will do his best, and no matter the result, that is what is important and that will serve him well throughout his life.
