It was the first semester of my freshman year, and I was trying to convince my advisor to let me drop “Viewing Life Mathematically.” Dr. Strait looked at me from across his pile of James Joyce. It might have actually been William Wordsworth or Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I don’t remember what author it was, but between those three options, I feel like I have a pretty good chance of being correct.
“Kaity,” He said with a long pause. “One ‘B’ is not going to kill you.”
I knew my strengths and my weaknesses. Math fell in the latter half. Still, it hurt to think of my unblemished freshman year GPA starting with a stain. After reassuring me that my life would not be over if I had one B on my transcript, he gave me the advice that gave this editorial its title.
Every final editorial from the Executive Editor of The Collegian is always some kind of advice or reflection on their time at Asbury. This is far from my normal writing style. Cultural criticism? Great. Political commentary? Sign me up – angry emails and comments included. I’ve been dreading this day for a while. My way around this problem is by offering the advice of people more qualified than I am and simply telling you how well I’ve followed it. I won’t quote Dr. Strait’s advice, as the last four years have made my memory a bit hazy, and I am sure that he said it more eloquently than I’ll be able to write.
He reminded me that I was at Asbury because I love to learn – a basic reminder, but one that I needed. I shouldn’t be taking exams, writing papers or completing assignments with only a letter or percentage in mind. I should do it for the love of learning.
I ended up completing my freshman “Viewing Life Mathematically” course and I managed to get an A minus instead of a B. My senior year, I sat in Dr. Strait’s office once again and expressed my frustration at the single A minus on my transcript. He told me to calm down because “it adds character.”
Even all these years later, I still care about my grades a little too much. I still care about achievements, CVs, resumes, accolades and awards. It would be dishonest for me to say that my perfectionism does not run deep and that I won’t carry a small part of it with me as I walk across the stage to accept my diploma. But after four years, I can confidently say that, despite my natural impulses, I am no longer interested in perfection. Instead, I am interested in the good.
Theologian Brian McLaren distinguishes between the idea of perfection and good in his book “A New Kind of Christianity.” He makes this distinction in his discussion of Eden, claiming that God did not declare Eden perfect; he declared it good. Perfection is a Greco-Roman idea. It’s an immovable state of the highest goodness possible. Goodness is a Hebrew idea: ever-improving and eternal in its state of becoming. Every day it becomes somehow better than the last. There is no end to goodness. No lid or ceiling that goodness cannot surpass. While perfection is static. No room for forward movement or growth.
I’ve carried this idea from McLaren and this advice from Dr. Strait for years, and only in writing about one did I realize how connected each idea was to the other. A shift toward this idea of good instead of perfect is a love letter to process. It’s an affirmation that the act of creating a thing is as important as the creation itself.
The love of learning is not just for the knowledge gained at the end of a student’s time at a liberal arts university. It isn’t all the years of reading and studying signified by the letters “B.A.” The love is for learning as an ongoing act, sometimes with a tangible product and sometimes without.
Grades make up a small portion of the college experience. More often than not, it’s rereading a line of text that you’ve read three times already because you just cannot understand French philosophy (sorry to Dr. Brown and Dr. Strait). More frequently than the feeling of accomplishment at a completed paper there, there is staring at a blinking cursor on an empty page, or rubbing your temples as if an idea might just fall out.
This model doesn’t just apply to academica. Athletes know the pain of losing passion for what they’re doing, only getting through the season on the result of each game, like living life from paycheck to paycheck. Musicians know the frustration at the amount of time it takes to be great. They know how easy it is to forget that they started doing this all because of the simple fact that they love music.
We may outwardly say that we understand the impossibility of perfection. The phrase “perfection is a myth” has become cheap. But internally, we still strive for achievement in a way that assumes there is a highest point of goodness from which you can go no higher. Sometimes we look at professors as if they’ve reached the summit of knowledge and achievement. But the deep, dark secret is that those professors are waiting for tenure. And even the tenured professors are waiting for their next publication, their next conference presentation, their next career achievement. There is no final state, and if we live our lives as if there is, we’ll look back and realize that we wasted all of our time waiting for the next rung on the ladder because we had some illusory idea of what lies at the top.
Achievements and accomplishments are good. I’ll take great pride in switching the tassel on my graduation cap from one side to the other. But when I do, I won’t count it as one rung on the ladder before the next big hurdle. I’ll see it as a benchmark of the process of learning that I grew to love while at Asbury.
Photo courtesy of Kaity McCracken.
Final Letter from the Editor: For the love of learning
It was the first semester of my freshman year, and I was trying to convince my advisor to let me drop “Viewing Life Mathematically.” Dr. Strait looked at me from across his pile of James Joyce. It might have actually been William Wordsworth or Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I don’t remember what author it was, but between those three options, I feel like I have a pretty good chance of being correct.
“Kaity,” He said with a long pause. “One ‘B’ is not going to kill you.”
I knew my strengths and my weaknesses. Math fell in the latter half. Still, it hurt to think of my unblemished freshman year GPA starting with a stain. After reassuring me that my life would not be over if I had one B on my transcript, he gave me the advice that gave this editorial its title.
Every final editorial from the Executive Editor of The Collegian is always some kind of advice or reflection on their time at Asbury. This is far from my normal writing style. Cultural criticism? Great. Political commentary? Sign me up – angry emails and comments included. I’ve been dreading this day for a while. My way around this problem is by offering the advice of people more qualified than I am and simply telling you how well I’ve followed it. I won’t quote Dr. Strait’s advice, as the last four years have made my memory a bit hazy, and I am sure that he said it more eloquently than I’ll be able to write.
He reminded me that I was at Asbury because I love to learn – a basic reminder, but one that I needed. I shouldn’t be taking exams, writing papers or completing assignments with only a letter or percentage in mind. I should do it for the love of learning.
I ended up completing my freshman “Viewing Life Mathematically” course and I managed to get an A minus instead of a B. My senior year, I sat in Dr. Strait’s office once again and expressed my frustration at the single A minus on my transcript. He told me to calm down because “it adds character.”
Even all these years later, I still care about my grades a little too much. I still care about achievements, CVs, resumes, accolades and awards. It would be dishonest for me to say that my perfectionism does not run deep and that I won’t carry a small part of it with me as I walk across the stage to accept my diploma. But after four years, I can confidently say that, despite my natural impulses, I am no longer interested in perfection. Instead, I am interested in the good.
Theologian Brian McLaren distinguishes between the idea of perfection and good in his book “A New Kind of Christianity.” He makes this distinction in his discussion of Eden, claiming that God did not declare Eden perfect; he declared it good. Perfection is a Greco-Roman idea. It’s an immovable state of the highest goodness possible. Goodness is a Hebrew idea: ever-improving and eternal in its state of becoming. Every day it becomes somehow better than the last. There is no end to goodness. No lid or ceiling that goodness cannot surpass. While perfection is static. No room for forward movement or growth.
I’ve carried this idea from McLaren and this advice from Dr. Strait for years, and only in writing about one did I realize how connected each idea was to the other. A shift toward this idea of good instead of perfect is a love letter to process. It’s an affirmation that the act of creating a thing is as important as the creation itself.
The love of learning is not just for the knowledge gained at the end of a student’s time at a liberal arts university. It isn’t all the years of reading and studying signified by the letters “B.A.” The love is for learning as an ongoing act, sometimes with a tangible product and sometimes without.
New year, new faculty
Grades make up a small portion of the college experience. More often than not, it’s rereading a line of text that you’ve read three times already because you just cannot understand French philosophy (sorry to Dr. Brown and Dr. Strait). More frequently than the feeling of accomplishment at a completed paper there, there is staring at a blinking cursor on an empty page, or rubbing your temples as if an idea might just fall out.
This model doesn’t just apply to academica. Athletes know the pain of losing passion for what they’re doing, only getting through the season on the result of each game, like living life from paycheck to paycheck. Musicians know the frustration at the amount of time it takes to be great. They know how easy it is to forget that they started doing this all because of the simple fact that they love music.
We may outwardly say that we understand the impossibility of perfection. The phrase “perfection is a myth” has become cheap. But internally, we still strive for achievement in a way that assumes there is a highest point of goodness from which you can go no higher. Sometimes we look at professors as if they’ve reached the summit of knowledge and achievement. But the deep, dark secret is that those professors are waiting for tenure. And even the tenured professors are waiting for their next publication, their next conference presentation, their next career achievement. There is no final state, and if we live our lives as if there is, we’ll look back and realize that we wasted all of our time waiting for the next rung on the ladder because we had some illusory idea of what lies at the top.
Achievements and accomplishments are good. I’ll take great pride in switching the tassel on my graduation cap from one side to the other. But when I do, I won’t count it as one rung on the ladder before the next big hurdle. I’ll see it as a benchmark of the process of learning that I grew to love while at Asbury.
Photo courtesy of Kaity McCracken.