Whatever you do, put your best effort into it. And if you’re not willing to put in your best effort, don’t do it. Now, admittedly sometimes the second recommendation isn’t really an option. For example, as a high school student, you are required to take certain classes which you may not feel is worth putting your best effort into, but you have to take and pass the class anyway if you want to graduate. But as you get older, you have choices. You can choose to go to college or not. You can choose to get a job, or you can choose to join the Peace Corps or the military. Make sure you choose something you are willing to put your best effort into, and choose to put your best effort into whatever you do. From my own painful personal experiences, I can recall times when I put forth my best effort, and times when I didn’t. The things I put my best effort into ended well. Other times did not end well. It is incumbent on each of us to choose a path that we will put our best effort into. Be “all in” or else choose a different path.
At various times I have heard students opine that they feel the math they are studying is useless, or that chemistry is useless, or learning a foreign language is useless, or whatever. Sometimes you may feel studying a subject is useless, but you still need to pass that class in order to graduate from high school. Eventually you will get to a point in life where you can choose to do something that is not useless. Choose wisely. No one wants to hire someone, or accept as a student into their program, who will only put in a ‘C’ or ‘D’ level of effort. The world is looking for you to make a meaningful contribution in your chosen endeavors by putting forth your very best effort, with sincere good faith. I will openly admit that I thought learning things in high school was somewhat useless, but I worked hard to do well in school because I wanted to be a soldier, I knew that West Point is very selective, and I wanted to prove that I was worthy. With age has come a genuine appreciation for the value of knowledge, learning, and education.
As a student at UC Riverside, I scored well in my classes because I was genuinely motivated to learn, to master my craft, and I put in the time, effort, and “skull sweat” as appropriate. Given that I was really, genuinely putting in my very best effort, it should not be surprising that I graduated summa cum laude – “with highest honors” – reserved for top 2% of graduating students. I look back at my time and efforts at UCR with great pride and satisfaction, because I don’t need someone else to tell me that it was indeed a job well done. And I came to truly enjoy the process of learning new skills and gaining new knowledge, the process of exercising my mind and scholastic abilities. Perhaps I should add that my knee injury (and a few other injuries also) prevented me from enjoying sports and athletic endeavors, so all of my youthful energy was readily poured into studying hard.
Fast forward a few years, to my time as a graduate student at Tohoku University in Japan. My injuries had healed, I was in good physical health, and I was seriously considering trying for a slot in military special operations. I was spending considerable time at the gym trying to meet the physical fitness standards for that career goal, and minimal time in the lab studying. Studying was a secondary priority in my mind. Not exactly a good setup for success as a graduate student. The point of being a graduate student is to study and become an expert in that academic field. I treated studying is if I were just punching a time clock, doing the bare minimum. Did I learn anything useful in engineering? A little bit, but not nearly as much as I could have. I knew that I was not prioritizing my studies, and I knew I wasn’t willing to put my best effort into graduate school Rather than hanging on like a useless leech, I should have left because I was not “all in” on studying and doing engineering research. My lackadaisical academic effort was evident in the quality of work that I produced. There were other, more painful negative consequences as well, which I do not wish to share publicly.
You’d think that someone well educated would learn, but no, I made a similar mistake while employed at my last engineering job. When I first began my job as an engineer there, I was eager and thought that I could easily spend 20 or 30 years there before retiring. Within a year I had grown sorely disillusioned with the reality of corporate American leadership that only cares about making profits and covering their rear end, without any regard for people or basic integrity. I should have resigned right then, but I did not, instead hanging on and putting minimal effort into my work for the next two years. Not surprisingly, it did not end well. I could have saved everyone (and especially myself) a lot of trouble if I had simply resigned at the one-year mark, instead of waiting two more years before resigning. Those two years could have been spent doing something else, somewhere else, where I actually was willing to put forth my very best effort (like teaching and tutoring).
And now I have several reviews on Google, all five-star ratings. The quality of instruction that I provide is evident in these reviews. Why? Because I actually care about teaching and helping students succeed. I’m all in as an instructor, and that effort is clear in the quality of service that I provide to my students. Financial success has not caught up to me yet, but I’m hopeful that it will, because I am all in as an instructor helping students succeed.