Thursday, April 29, 2010

What You Can Learn From A Lousy Teacher...

Seth Godin seems to have a knack for making me think about things differently. He did that again for me in this recent post.

If you have a teacher (of any sort) that you cannot please, that you cannot learn from, that is unwilling to take you where you need to go because he is defending the status quo and demonstrates your failure on whatever report card he chooses to use, you could consider yourself a failure. Or you could remind yourself...


- Grades are an illusion.

- Your passion and insight are reality.

- Your work is worth more than mere congruence to an answer key.

- Persistence in the face of a skeptical authority figure is a powerful ability.

- Fitting in is a short-term strategy, standing out pays off in the long run.

- If you care enough about the work to be criticized, you've learned enough for today.