My grandmother, Ruby Bean Faulkner, who lived her entire life in Maine, had a number of colorful and pithy sayings. The one I think I love the most is the one she would use after completing a tedious task. She would step back, give a little shrug and say, “Good enough for the guy I’m dating at the moment.”

There are all sorts of reasons I like this saying, not the least of which is that — particularly when I was younger — the thought of my grandmother having dated anyone other than my grandfather was shocking. As I grew older, and especially after I began teaching, Nannie’s saying took on a special resonance. As much as we need to teach our students to take their efforts seriously, to understand that they must write multiple drafts of papers and read carefully and work hard, we also need to teach our students that there are some things that do not require 100% effort all the time.

Okay, I know. I can hear you from here. “But Wendy, students need to learn that good enough isn’t good enough!” “But Wendy, my students write a first draft of a paper and think the assignment’s finished!” “But Wendy, how will students ever learn to apply themselves fully to an academic task?” I agree. Wholeheartedly. Yet I also know that when everything is important, nothing is important. I know that it is imperative that our students learn to prioritize, and learn that they need to revisit their priorities every day and make adjustments when necessary. And I know that unless students are able to master the idea of “good enough for the guy I’m dating at the moment,” they will struggle to master the necessary art of managing their time and their projects successfully.

I think an example that illustrates this necessary art might help. In my last semester of graduate school, I came upon a fellow student standing by the mirrors in the ladies’ rest room. She was new to the program that year, and I had come to know her in a course we took together. I started to say “hi” when I saw that she was silently weeping. (This is not as unusual a sight in graduate school as one might hope.) When she was able to speak, she said, “I’m just so tired. I’m teaching, and then all that reading.” (Again, not unusual.) As she continued to talk, however, I discovered that this poor young woman had been trying to read everything — and I mean everything — related to all her courses. Not just the assigned readings, but all the suggested readings, anything the professors or her fellow students mentioned in class, books and articles mentioned in books and articles she had read — I mean, EVERYTHING. When I told her that this was impossible, that nobody could read everything, she was surprised. “You mean, you don’t do that?” she said. “Sweetie, nobody does that,” was my reply.

Now, this young woman’s experience was extreme, but it is an experience that I have with my undergraduates quite often. Every task, every reading, every chore, carries equal weight, and students become immobilized. And what do they do when they are immobilized? Yup. They do nothing.

There is a corollary to this problem, a corollary that is a direct result of the “everybody gets a gold star” method of dealing with children and teenagers: students do not want to do something they can’t excel at. Now, I don’t mean to imply that all fear of failure stems from the “gold star” method. What I am talking about is how, when children are not allowed to fail naturally as part of their everyday experiences, they develop neither the coping mechanisms to deal with failure nor the self-confidence to try new things without knowing whether or not they will succeed at those things. They become closed off to new experiences, afraid to venture into areas where they might not get that gold star. My husband often quotes G. K. Chesterton, who said, “If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly” (What’s Wrong WIth the World). This doesn’t mean one should set out to do something badly. It means that some things (“hobbies,” for Chesterton) have an intrinsic value and that doing those things (things such as taking photographs, writing poetry or drawing, for example) has an intrinsic value. I am a horrible piano player, yet I take pleasure in those afternoons when I am able to spend an hour or so working my way through my favorite sheet music. If I worried about whether I was ever going to be good at piano playing — and believe me, I will not — I would miss out on something that I enjoy. A student who fears failing becomes immobilized. And what does a student do when s/he is immobilized? Well, you know.

So. . .what can we do for our students? Encourage them to try new things. Teach them to prioritize. Find ways to break that cycle of immobilization and fear. All of these will help. Yet there is something even more import that we can do for our students: model joy. Model the joy we find in learning. The joy we feel when the writing goes well. The joy of discovery. The joy, not of failure, but of recovering from failure. Model joy, and you model a way of living and learning that will serve your students well.