Crucial advice for aspiring scholars, artists, and plastic surgeons

This 5 minute video offers some of the best advice I’ve seen for aspiring scholars, artists, writers, architects, plastic surgeons, chefs, gardeners, you name it.  Ignore the title of the video and pretend he’s talking about your chosen hobby or profession.

Basically, when we start out doing something new, we’re able to recognize that the quality of our work doesn’t match the quality of work that got us interested in the first place.  Your first documentary film won’t come out lookin’ like Hoop Dreams.  Your short stories aren’t quite at the level of Flannery O’Connor.  Your first academic paper, let alone the first draft, isn’t on par with that of Professor McSmarty-Pants.  But you know what you’re shooting for; you can appreciate excellence in the field.

As Howard Becker warns in Writing for Social Scientists, looking around and seeing so many polished, finished products can lead you to think there’s something magical about creativity, that others are able to produce hits without false starts, tons of editing, and hours, sometimes years, of hard work.  Seeing a video like this reminds you that getting good, whatever that means for you, takes time and practice.

This video comes from a series that I recently recommended, so some of you might have seen it already.  However, when a friend told me how much she loved the series, I confessed that I hadn’t actually watched all four videos.  I went back to watch them and thought this one, #3, was pure gold.