"Deep inside every human being is the yearning to be self-motivated rather than controlled by rewards, authority, or some other aspect of the external environment." (From Supermotivation by Dean R. Spitzer)
Growing up, we spent a lot of time trying to get good. Why'd you practice the piano? Why'd you spend those hours juggling a soccer ball? To get good, of course. Maybe you wanted to get as good as Beethoven or Ronaldinho (though, from what I hear, Beethoven couldn't play soccer to save his life), but you likely weren't motivated by a desire to best anyone. You wanted to improve, to make it to a point where you could impress your friends, and that required attaining a certain level of skill. These days, though, it seems to make little difference whether you're good or bad at various skills and challenges: it only matters whether you're better or worse.
Law school exemplifies this new development. With every major course on a mandatory curve, you could conceivably earn the highest grades without much absolute knowledge of the topic...so long as your ignorance paled in comparison to your peers'. This sentiment manifest itself in the oft-repeated joke--if you can call it that--heard reverberating through the venerable halls of UT Law: "Think of the law school as a bear, and think of your classmates as fellow campers. To survive, you don't need to outrun the bear; you just need to outrun enough of your classmates."
The relative merits of the curve system have been debated at length, and I have no interest in reinvigorating this discussion. (Nor should you take my example as either an endorsement or a criticism of the sytem.) Rather, what aggravates me, to a point, is the universality of this theme of "betterment." Want a job? Be better than the other candidates. Want a date? Be better than the other suitors. Want to win in sports, poker, or backgammon? Be better than your opponent. Whatever happened to the pursuit of an absolute, rather than a relative, mastery of a skill or subject? Did this pursuit ever genuinely exist in the first place?
A few acknowledgements before I proceed:
Yes, I realize that you can avoid getting caught up in the various competitions simply by becoming perfect (Francisco D'Anconia, anyone?). If you achieve total mastery, you will succeed or win without ever needing glance at your competitiors. That is so unrealistic a scenario that I feel comfortable dismissing it.
Yes, I realize that you can reframe my piano and soccer examples so that the player is not attempting to achieve a certain level of skill but rather is trying to become better than his former self. At the risk of dismissing this quibble too flippantly, you're rarely competing with only yourself for that summer job.
Yes, I referenced Ronaldinho just so I could put a link to that Joga Bonito commercial. Speaking of which, who's that old man with the unintelligible accent? Well, before he did TV ads, he did this (oh, and this).
Back when I spent more time playing poker, I had virtually no competitive streak. I derived little to no joy from winning a game of Horse or racquetball. For better or worse, poker had stripped me of this type of satisfaction. It makes sense, obviously: the correct plays in a game of poker are rewarded so infrequently and sporadically (due to the luck involved) that a player with the immediate goal of "winning" will almost certainly go broke. Of course, it's not as though I could no longer get anything out of a sport or game. Rather, I took delight in performing as perfectly as possible. In poker, this just means making the mathematically correct move at every opportunity. In a game like racquetball, it might mean making proper decisions regarding where and when to hit the ball. For example, if in a normal game of racquetball I made the proper decision 80% of the time, I'd be happy if I made the proper decision >80% of the time. My contentment varied directly and proportionally to the percentage of correct decisions.** What had no influence on my happiness, of course, was the outcome of the game. This makes sense: if you were to play Michael Jordan in basketball, you'd lose every game. You simply would have no way of beating him. If you derive happiness only from victories, you have no control whatsoever over your happiness. Your efforts, your decision-making, etc, are wholly squandered as a result.
This mindset kept me pretty loose and carefree throughout college, but it did have some weird side effects. I'd find myself watching a Bears game and they'd miss a last-second FG to win and I'd just think, "eh, Gould hits that 80% of the time, so in the long run they won this game." It wasn't a rationalization, either; I just had no concern for the outcome. In poker terms, I was the opposite of "results-oriented." While it occasionally led to bizarre scenarios, I relished this mindset because it had the effect of making an emotion (happiness) slightly more rational. Happiness could almost be quantified. Moreover, I alone controlled my success/failure (and, consequently, my happiness). Admittedly, the basketball court is only a small portion of my life, and thus a small portion of my happiness, but it was a start.
Law school changed this in me, unfortunately. With so much emphasis on grades and internships, I regressed to my competitive state of mind. This change manifest itself in sports, as well: in September, I just wanted to play well in racquetball. By November, I wanted to win.
These days, I find it more and more difficult to enjoy my successes (and not just because they occur less and less frequently, haha). I don't feel as though I've earned them. For example, let's pretend that I got a 4.0 this semester. (Those of you who've heard my story about my Contracts grade know that this counterfactual is, indeed, counterfactual and not a veiled brag.) From where should my satsfaction come? The 'A' I receive only reflects that I did better than the majority.* It says nothing about my absolute understanding of the material. It certainly can't measure how hard I worked, or how inherently intelligent I am with respect to Criminal or Contract Law. Plus, in certain classes, the difference between an A and a B+ will only be a few points. This makes sense, because if you put a group of similarly-equipped students in a room and instruct them identically, they will absorb approximately the same amount of material. Receiving a 4.0 across the board makes it less likely that any one grade is a fluke, but even if I'm undeniably the "best" in my section, what does that mean? I still may have no grasp of much of the major concepts; hell, our Contracts professor made it very clear that were there no curve, most of us would not pass her class. Maybe I just write the best under pressure. Maybe I can comprehend the introductory ideas but will struggle in upper-level courses. Grades, those omniscient, objective evaluators, don't do much of a job of evaluating me.
I certainly don't condemn the law school for its curve. Furthermore, I realize that competition deserves a prominent spot in our society. When we apply for jobs, for instance, we all have that baseline required acumen. Without ranking each candidate against the others, it'd be impossible to determine who should be hired. Better to compete than to leave such an important decision in the hands of an arbitrary decision-maker. Maybe that's a peaceful compromise: make absolute mastery a priority, and resort to relative mastery only as a tiebreaker. (I don't purport to have any answers...I'm just thinking aloud.)
*I want to make it unequivocally clear that I have tons of respect for the intelligence and academic discipline that most of my classmates possess. While I personally don't get much satisfaction out of "bettering" anyone, it'd be a tremendous compliment to succeed relative to the extremely capable men and women who take my classes.
**At first blush, it may seem easy to make a correct decision nearly 100% of the time. In a game of spades, for instance, unless you've lost your self-discipline you play the card that you think has the best chance of achieving your objective. So, you've made a bona fide attempt to make the correct decision nearly 100% of the time. Good faith, however, isn't good enough. Ex: I lead a diamond because I feel that it's my best chance to win. My opponent trumps and wins the trick. I made a good faith attempt, so what's the problem? Well, if I reasonably should've known that my opponent had no diamonds left (if we had previously played 3 diamond tricks in which the diamonds held, and if I had 1 diamond in my hand), I'm at fault for that error. The analogy holds, albeit tentatively, when applied to sports.
If the above Spitzer quote inspired this discussion, I have to admit that I am pleasantly surprised by the direction you took. I think the practice of “betterment” somewhat cheapens the pursuit of achievement and moreover certainly decreases achievement’s explanatory power (like, if you get a 4.0 but didn’t understand all of the major concepts; the 4.0 suggests you “bettered” your peers rather than that you became proficient in the material). This is perplexing (and a bit disheartening I’m sure for a law student like you –or maybe motivating, who knows!). It marginalizes the pursuit of proficiency and substitutes it with a concept we in psychology like to call “satisficing.”
ReplyDeleteSatisficing, loosely defined, is when a subject uses the bare minimum amount of information needed to make a decision. If a student knows how much achievement is necessary for him to better his peers, then this idea would suggest that student would do that bare minimum only. The student may have been able to achieve absolute mastery of Contracts for example, but he “satisficed” and merely bettered his peers.
It makes sense to do this when you have multiple classes and varying potentials for achievement in them. If you know that learning 60% of the material will get you an A in Contracts for example, but you also know that you would need to know 90% of the material for an A in Criminal Law, since you have limited time and learning potential (maybe) it would make sense for you to partition your time and efforts such that you achieve 60% competency in contracts and 90% competency in crim. law
Ideally, you would do both first but then you would continue to study more in either or both contracts or crim. law. in order to achieve absolute proficiency; but there is no external motivation or reward for doing this extra studying and so many of us don’t pursue it. That’s regrettable.
Great comment, Anelia. I think the concept of "satisficing" describes, for better or worse, the optimal play for law students. I guess the underlying question, though, is whether the pursuit of absolute proficiency is as noble as many of us like to imagine it. What's the purpose of it? After all, as you pointed out, we have limited resources. Ignoring the demands of society and the real world, should we use our time to satisfice in 3 areas, or to master 1 and gain marginal competency in the other 2? Tough questions.
ReplyDeleteI think in college (and organized education more generally) satisficing cannot be avoided. I mean, if you spent all your time studying Contracts because you wanted absolute proficiency, then you would neglect your other classes and might flunk out of school. It seems to me that organized education forces you to suppress any desire you might have to obtain absolute proficiency in anything...
ReplyDeleteWhether that's a noble pursuit, I can't say. But I do think that "betterment" is not an inherently ignoble pursuit. Being the best swimmer by 1/100th of a second and being the best swimmer by 1/10th of a second for example (I should say I know nothing about swimming and hope that are realistic figures but) is still being the best. One is more safe than the other; someone else is less likely to steal our record if you have achieved absolute proficiency than if you merely "bettered" your opponent. But both are achievements, wouldn't you say? Knowing what it takes to win is a skill.