Jobs, homework, and shadow-boxing
The other day I ranted about today’s kids and their attitude toward employment.
:)
A number of students have stopped me in the hall asking for explanations, clarifications, mostly centering on what prompted the rant. I think I have a good answer, finally. Well … at least a better one than I’ve been giving over the past few days.
Ever I started doing the “start-up 101” classes at Maryland, I’ve been trying to figure out how to teach good design. Which, to me, amounts to instilling in someone the desire to do good design. What good design requires is the burning internal need to do something right, the burning dissatisfaction with anything but correctness, a demand for rightness. This is what causes people in startup companies to forego eating, sleeping, dressing well, taking care of their health, etc. … all in the name of putting a product out. These people do not willingly undergo burnout just because someone gave them a paycheck; they do it for the same reason that an author writes, a painter paints. They do it because they have to.
What I realized the other day is that students have the same attitude toward jobs that they have toward their homework—namely, they do it because they are told to by someone in charge and not for themselves.
Problem: this attitude guarantees substandard results. Nobody will ever do a good job at something unless they want to do that particular something and are doing it for their own benefit.
I’m not interested in figuring out how to make students want to do homework (humorous though, that); rather I am interested in figuring out how to break the link between the two, how to show students that the two things are, in fact, very different. A job is very unlike homework, largely because it matters. Homework is shadow-boxing; a job is fighting for your life. Take ownership.
