Go On! Try Something You're Bad At!
The #1 question many parents want to know right now is, “What should my kid do this summer?” As an online SAT tutor and college essay coach, I help many rising juniors and seniors prepare for their college application journeys during the summer. While this is a great use of time – especially since camps and other traditional summer activities are canceled due to COVID – I hope that kids (and adults!) use this summer for one (more) thing:
Try something you’re bad at.
“What?!?!?” I can hear nervous Tiger Moms and their cubs around the land shouting. “Are you crazy?” In this era of hyper-specialization, gurus of all stripes (including some online SAT tutor s) teach us to get really good at one thing. “The riches are in the niches,” one business advisor rhymed. Some college counselors throw the same advice at high schoolers hoping for scholarships or admission to their dream university. Of course, there’s nothing wrong – and much to commend – in spending 10,000 hours to become an expert. This process develops the discipline that universities and eventually employers seek.
Usually, however, we specialize at what we’re good in.
I can’t imagine, for example, having completed a doctorate in History if I had absolutely no aptitude for writing, reading, or remembering names, dates, and events. But, I’ve “been good at” school since before kindergarten. Graduating as valedictorian of my high school class (before the era of online SAT tutor s), completing Harvard magna cum laude, and earning a Ph.D. barely forced me out of my comfort zone. (OK, maybe going to Harvard did, but it was the social environment, not the academic one, that I found the most challenging.) Nevertheless, pushing myself to do things I’m not good at has taught me more important life lessons than pursuing what comes easily.
Photo by @serenarepice on Unsplash
As a pre-teen, I loved swimming, but I wasn’t fast enough to make the junior varsity team in seventh grade. So, I enrolled the next fall in the Connetquot Swim Club, where my ability placed me in a lane with seven-year-olds. Though I was embarrassed to practice with children so much younger than me, I kept at it.
it was precisely this kind of experience – enduring social discomfort to pursue a love – that inured me to the social challenges I faced as a public school, working-class kid at Harvard!
After swimming all fall and winter, I made the JV team in the spring of the eighth grade. I continued swimming through tenth grade, when I made varsity – but practiced in Lane 1, the slow lane, for the entire season. I still kept at, though, despite the fact that I lost every single race I ever entered, except for one. (I can actually remember Coach Brian’s excitement when my head popped out of the water after the only race when I ever placed first. I think he was more surprised than I was! As an online SAT tutor, I feel the same way when a kid who keeps studying and studying achieves their goal score.)
Photo by @shotbycerquiera on Unsplash
As a teenaged Type-A personality who thrived on being “the best” at most of what I did, I can attribute
my willingness to keep doing something that I was so bad at to just one thing: I love to swim.
When my head enters the water and the only sound I hear is my own bubbly exhalation and my arms and legs cutting through the water, I lose myself in the rhythmic flow.
Despite this love, a host of anxieties almost prevented me from showing up to swim in the Connetquot River last Saturday morning with a group of competitive swimmers I didn’t know. “I’ll be the oldest one there.” (I wasn’t.) “I’ll be the fattest one there.” (Not that it matters, but I wasn’t.) “I’ll be the slowest one there.” Mmmmm, actually, I might have been. As the other swimmers in the Open Water Swim Club of Long Island zipped past me, lapping me again and again, I realized that my speed, age, and weight didn’t matter. What mattered was showing up and doing something I love – not because I’m good at it, but despite the fact that I’m bad.
What has your child expressed an interest in lately? How will you encourage them to keep going, even when they’re too slow, or sing off-key, or can’t make the basket? Let others know below!
Till next week, see you on the water!