When discussing "Don't Eat the Marshmalllow Yet" in class on Tuesday, many students expressed skepticism at the validity of the findings presented by Joachim de Posada: the idea that kids who didn't eat the marshmallow at 4 years old went on to be more successful in school/career/life than kids who ate the marshmallow before the 15 required minutes had elapsed. However, most of agreed with the basic theoretical premise that self-discipline and delayed gratification were key elements to success.
I want to interrogate the term "self-discipline" a bit more, and I think it has some nice connections to Luma's formula for success in Outcasts United. It's important, in truly analyzing this term, to split it into its two parts: self and discipline. Discipline, of course, is not always self-motivated; teachers, parents, coaches, etc. can all impose discipline, but that doesn't always lead to success. In fact, some students who were overly controlled in high school seem to rebel against that discipline in college, not always to the best results unfortunately. Therefore, the idea that discipline leads to success only when it is self-imposed, or intrinsically motivated, is an idea that resonates with me in thinking about college students. You have to want it for yourself, for your own betterment, because it rewards you, or else it rings false. But that's also really difficult -- it's easier in some ways when someone else is in charge of telling you what to do. Then all you have to do is follow directions, not decide what those directions will be. This kind of freedom and responsibility that comes from being a college student is harder, but I think it's also more rewarding in the end.
What is self discipline (the kind that brings freedom, responsibility, rewards)? What does it look like? I think of Luma, standing on the sidelines, watching her team but not yelling out to them. She let them make their own decisions, their own failures, and their own successes. Of course, in her many team practices, she tried to impart to them the knowledge they needed and help them hone their skills, but when it came down to game day, they were responsible for what they produced. I think Luma also saw her job as providing critical feedback from her more experienced perspective; she told them exactly what was good and bad about how they played without sugar-coating it. That kind of feedback must have been difficult to hear at times, but it provided the players with an honest assessment of where they needed to improve. It would take a lot of self-discipline to take that criticism in the positive way it was intended and not feel defensive or discouraged.
Before coming to college, are there a lot of spaces in which students get to practice self-discipline? I asked this question in class and got a mixture of answers depending on individual experiences and background. I started to think about a book we used in orientation last year called Generation Me in which the author, Jean Twenge, argues that today's college students have had a lot of experience with self-esteem building: everybody gets a trophy for participating and no one gets one for being the best, everyone gets a pizza party for just showing up whether or not you did anything good, no one gets singled out as better than anyone else because that makes others feel bad. Twenge goes on to say that this has been detrimental to students because 1) it doesn't motivate them to try to make themselves achieve higher than anyone else, 2) they aren't used to hearing criticism and don't respond well to it, and 3) don't look at themselves with a critical eye since they aren't used to that in general.
As with all of the information I try to have my class put in conversation with one another (and then enter into that conversation ourselves), I'm left with thinking "What we can learn from all this?" Here's my personal take on it: in INQ, we need to practice self-discipline, setting our own goals and meeting them; we need to practice self-critique so we can push ourselves to the next challenge; we need to practice building our self-esteem through the rewards that come from hard work and tackling complexity. When you become the person you are answering to, you can choose to cut corners, but it seems like it only cuts out on your own achievement and self-worth; a greater sense of self-respect comes when you are able to rise and meet those expectations you set for yourself. I see my role in that process as facilitator: I'm not exactly the "Luma" in the classroom, but I do want to emulate the way she facilitates the self-discipline she instills in her players.
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