(This is Stop #15 in the Texas A&M Building Writing Tour, my attempt to motivate myself on my dissertation by writing in every campus building before I graduate.)
Since my dialog with my inner perfectionist a couple weeks ago, I keep noodling on the concept of “good enough”. How good is good enough? Shouldn’t I try to excel at things I do? If I am writing something, shouldn’t I try to write it as well as I can? I always thought that if a task wasn’t worth doing well, it wasn’t worth doing at all. Now I’m reconsidering.
If I were in business, I could make decisions about what is “good enough” from a return-on-investment standpoint. That isn’t very helpful when it comes to dissertations and writing. From a monetary perspective, the dissertation’s return on investment is negative anyway. According to my calculations, based on the anticipated pay raise I would receive for earning a doctorate, I would need to work for my current institution for at least 30 years to recoup the money I’ve invested in tuition and school-related expenses.
That’s okay, because I never approached this from a money-making standpoint. Not all investments are financial, and the most valuable investment returns are not financial either. The time I invest writing my dissertation will be paid back in other ways.
If all goes well, I will eventually need to make decisions about how good is “good enough” on my dissertation. Do I do the bare minimum to satisfy my committee, or do I try to make it a masterpiece? I’m not there yet. Right now, my “how good is good enough” decisions involve other things. How carefully do I need to grade? How much time do I spend on a recommendation letter? How clean does the house need to be? Time and energy are both precious commodities. If I spend too much of either on other things, there is less available for the dissertation. At the same time, I have a moral obligation to serve my students and my institution, and serve them well. There’s a right balance to be found, and I’m sure I’m nowhere near finding it.
I’ve occasionally made a good “good enough” decision. It’s rare, but I’ve done it. This past week, I paid Mr. Car Wash $30 to clean my car inside and out, including an interior super-scrub and dash dressing. When they finished, I noticed a bit of dried Starbucks in the console cup-holder, and some big crumbs in the metal track holding the passenger seat. At first, I was upset. If I pay $30 to clean my car, shouldn’t it be clean? Maybe. Trouble is, I didn’t pay $30 just to get my car cleaned. I could have cleaned it myself, for free. My $30 was for getting it cleaned in 10 minutes.
For 10 minutes, it was good enough. It smelled nice, and it looked nice. If I want to grab a toothbrush and remove the dried Starbucks myself, I can. The cleaning job was good enough to dispel any trace of new car fever that might have been building lately. And that’s money well spent.
This “good enough” writing session occurred in the glassed-in second floor aerie of the Jack E. Brown Engineering Building. I’m glad I chose to explore upstairs—I felt like I was floating in the trees. (Though I liked the sign on the downstairs computer lab: “Observe. Engineers in their natural habitat. Please do not tap on glass; engineers are easily startled by outsiders.”)
This building is truly beautiful. Stark, but beautiful. I’m glad whoever designed this building was not satisfied with “good enough”.
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| What a lovely writing spot! |
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| It was fitting my little car reached 200K during a drive home from A&M. I took this photo at the Navasota stoplight...didn't even have to pull over. This was back in June...I'm hoping to reach 250K before I graduate! |
3 comments:
Nice story, and well described. We all struggle, I think, with the ability to see and draw that line that says 'good enough'.
I'm reminded of my grandfather, an engineer. He grew up in another era, another world. He started out in the coal-mines of South Wales, younest son of a lare familiy. Every other brother, his father, his uncles, put a tiny sum away, each week fo John's school fund. He was the one, the boy with dreams, and the intelligence to achieve them, and the family knew, that if only one of them could escape the poverty, and the danger, and the early death, that was their lot, it would be John.
So John went to school, black dust around his eyes and fingers. Then to the mechanics institute,then the college in the city. He learned to design steam-cranes.
And he fell in love.
But a coal-dust boy fron the valleys? In love with a factory-owner's daughter? Not good enough. So John sailed on the tide, to find work in the gold-mines of Africa, sent his beloved a ring he made, out of a nugget he found, in the jungle, after burying his companions, one by one. Death, not gold, was what he found most in Africa. So back to the sea, to the square-riggers, to Aaustralia, to Cape Horn, Valparaiso, to shipyards, steamships, to take the first motor-truck into Uruguay and assemble it there.
Eventually he had enough, experience, confidence, and savings, to return home. Present himself before Selina Maria's mother and father, and once more, no longer a skinny, coal-skinned boy, but a bronzed, self confident, citizen of the world. Good enough? His future father in law shook his hand, and Selina flew to him, and was his for the next seventy years.
My mother was a late child, i never got to meet my grandfather, though I heard a lot about him.
But a few years ago, shortly before my mother died, at the age of 86, I took her to the National Railway Museum at York, and she stood on the footplate of a locomotive of the Great Western Railway.
"My father would have made part of this", she said, stroking the green paint.
That locomotive worked the rails from 1907 to 1951, and covered two million, five thousand, eight-hundred and ninety five miles before being retired from service.
Good enough?
It was all a product, from the time that John Gear-Griffiths was a tiny boy, going into the darkness of the pit at the age of twelve, of people not accepting 'Good enough', of saying, "We can do better".
http://gritinthegears.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/another-shovelful-of-steam.html
Hi Soubriquet, thanks for stopping by. Neat family story! Of course, I see your point about not accepting "good enough". My perfectionist dilemma continues....
I should confess that I've also taken on board my other grandfather's approach. Now he was a farmer, a hard worker in all weathers, and farmers are great pragmatic improvisers.
Where one grandfather would carefully measure and file to fit a part perfectly, the other would bash it with a hammer until it fit well enough.
"If it won't fit with a little gentle tapping, you need a bigger hammer",
"Near enough for farming", and "If god believed in precision, then why did he give us hammers?.
Unarguable.
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