I’ve never been good at setting New Year’s resolutions. 2021 has felt like a particularly interesting cusp for me—I’m six months into my first “adult” job, gearing up for the summer cycle of performance reviews and the corporate ladder-climb. However, in trying to build a personhood outside my 9-to-5 (insert that “I do not dream of labor” tweet), I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about hobbyism, “passion” projects, and the ways in which I was taught to learn.
From first to third grade, I attended a Montessori school. The Montessori model was created by Maria Montessori, an Italian physician who championed the idea that given a prepared environment and room to explore, children are capable of a remarkable degree of creativity and self-motivation. Some of the hallmarks of Montessori schools include mixed-age classrooms, hands-on learning materials, and specified free choice periods. These I remember fondly: the class garden where I dutifully tended to my jalapeno and bell pepper plants, although seven-year-old me got impatient and harvested them too early. The library where I spent a lot of time reading encyclopedias on random topics like Iroquois mythology and making accordion books. We had basic lessons in English and math, Spanish and music, and at the beginning of the week I would sit down with my teacher and fill out my planner with six or seven tasks I had to get done by Friday, but in between, it was up to me to pursue whatever made me feel most inspired.
It was a little bit jarring when I switched schools in fourth grade. The idea of a schedule boggled me. And then there were grades. We didn’t have any grades in Montessori. While I vaguely recall some kind of end-of-year evaluations just to ensure we were “on track,” I’d never felt any pressure to perform. I suppose I had the sense that I was doing “well” based on my relationships with teachers, but I never got the message that success was tied to their validation. It seemed like enough to just do my projects and play with my friends. In middle school and high school, though, grades became the metric. I knew exactly what my grades meant and what they were supposed to set me up for. I was supposed to get into a “good” college, whatever that meant.
And then I crossed that finish line and the giant question was what’s next? What major, what clubs, what internship? What path are you going to take to set you up for success? Once you get in the mindset of measurement, it’s hard to break out of, and I spent a lot of freshman and sophomore year consumed by what my major choice might say about me and worrying about my GPA. I took interesting classes that I loved, but I also passed on opportunities I regret because in the back of my mind, I was still frantically weighing what would make me employable.
It’s ironic that in the process of educating myself, I got worse at learning. How many papers did I skim through, hopped up on caffeine, trying to bluster my way through a semi-coherent response before 9 AM? How many lectures did I skip because I reasoned I could just watch them at 2x speed later? To be fair, I met a lot of amazing people and professors who challenged and inspired me to try things outside of my comfort zone, but the self-motivation I’d always prided myself on had started to give way to exhaustion. I just wanted to get the day’s duties done and then go to sleep.
Now, though, it feels like I’ve finally gotten a chance to breathe. I’m reading for pleasure again! I’m taking up handicrafts like sewing. The world outside work is a free choice period I can fill with whatever I wish, whether that be editing videos or candle-making. And because I’m not getting scored on any of these things, I can switch them up at will.
Looking back, I think the real blessing of Montessori wasn’t just that it gave me an array of choices to reach for, but also that it gave me permission to quit. Obviously, I think determination has its place in our lives, but the Montessori model told me that it’s okay if you don’t max out on all your stats, that there’s value to following the whims of your internal compass. Within a grading system, every point goes into its bucket; you’re the “best” if you prove you can fill each to the brim. But it’s an exhausting and misleading way to live. Who convinced me that l needed to have it all to be successful? Montessori school let me flit between interests and change tracks in a way I haven’t really felt since. I get older, and I get more scared. I weigh the opportunity cost of school, of changing careers, of what the slightest shift in attention or time not spent on the “hustle” means in an era of increasing specialization and a culture of “always be optimizing.”
I’m trying to remember how it felt to play in the realm of fascination. To seek things out not because I felt like I had to have enough opinions to fill a room, but just because the world had another leaf for me to turn over. To pull things off the shelf and tinker with them and put them back.
I don’t have a neat wrap-up to this, and in the interest of shaking off my perfectionism, I am just going to deposit a quote from an interview with Kurt Vonnegut, in which he recounts a piece of advice someone gave him that changed his perspective:
‘I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.’
Here’s to not always being good at the things we do. Here’s to loving them anyways.
Happy New Year! Tell me about a random topic or hobby you’re really into these days. :)
‘Til next time. <3