devotion

I just spent 4.5 hours preparing and scanning solutions to the practice final (and another handout I made) for my AAP students. Right now I'm sort of frustrated because I don't even know how it took that long, and the majority of the time wasn't even on something productive, it was just on scanning. It's crazy!! Like probably a good 2.5 hours of that was me just sitting at the scanner, waiting for it to scan hella pages (it actually takes a pretty long time, and the software is buggy so it messes up, which means rescanning)...

It made me think about the difference between an idea and really making that idea happen. The difference is devotion to the idea. Anyone can think of an idea. Like I had the idea to make a pretty thorough and challenging practice final, and an additional worksheet on symmetry (since many of my students didn't understand when you can/can't use symmetry to simplify a problem). Sounds easy, but in total it probably took me like 10 hours of work (during finals week, no less) to pull off, from thinking of new problems they haven't done before/researching problems, to designing the worksheet on symmetry (which I've seen no precedent for), to writing out the solutions, correcting my solutions to make sure I made no mistakes, to finally scanning them. I had no idea it would take this long, and now I know why so many professors don't post solutions- it takes longer than you think!!

It really sounds like I'm complaining... I'm not. I'm shocked at how long it took me, but I realized that I wouldn't be willing to spend this much time (and a significant portion on things that don't *directly* benefit my tutees, like scanning the solutions, when I could spend longer finding better problems to put on the final) unless I really cared. I guess that's how you know what you're passionate about- if you're willing to go from the idea to it's execution, regardless of the bullshit in between, then you are passionate about that idea. And believe me, there will always be bullshit standing between a great idea and its execution.

This is also the way I've been thinking about picking a job... like the stuff that engineers do sounds really cool, right? Design an iPod (well, I used to think that would be cool). Make a space shuttle. Design a fuel efficient vehicle. The results are cool for sure. But there's soooo much that goes from idea to execution that you don't think about, and in reality that's what most people working on a project will spend their time on: getting small shit done.

What I realized, though, was I really didn't care enough about the end products produced to do all the small things that lead towards the end result. And I didn't even really enjoy the small shit that much either, it was really tedious. Hence, not gonna be an engineer.

This made me think of my experiences in mentorship, too. I would spend sooo long on annoying things like going to the CSP office, researching where to buy supplies, figuring out how to get around bureaucracy, when those things didn't directly benefit the program. But they needed to be done. If you really care, you make it happen. And even though it was frustrating, I had the bigger picture in mind and knew that this was important. As annoying as it was, I enjoyed the small things more than as an engineer, because at least you're a) interacting with people, b) trying to overcome the man, man, and c) working towards a meaningful future (something I've come to realize is I care more about social reform than technical advancement, although the latter definitely impacts the former, for better or for worse).

tl;dr: Making a vision a reality always has bullshit along the way. I've come to realize that you should spend your time dealing with bullshit you don't mind wading through for the end result. Or, put another way, do something that you can view as a journey, not a destination.

Man, that last sentence is good, if I may say so myself, even if it is cliched. It makes me want to rewrite this whole post with that as the thesis. Eh.