I was bored in my poetry class the other day, so I drew a picture. I’ve been teaching myself to draw, and it came out pretty good, so when I got back to my dorm, I hung the picture on my fridge with a pink-and-red magnet. It’s a mini-fridge, as per usual in college, so it’s kind of low to the ground and unremarkable, but I signed and dated that crappy drawing and slapped it up there to remind myself how far I’d come from stick figures. I got a final paper back the next day, and it took five magnets to hold that monster up. It falls down every time I open the fridge. I do this for two reasons that are kind of the same.

1. Most children remember the crowning moment of Report Card day, Art Portfolio night, or Test Return day: a prized accomplishment, whether a C or an A, a painting or a picture, magnet-ed to the gravelly-white fridge. It’s a core moment not only in the development of a child’s recognition-reward system (i.e. good grade = praise), but in anyone’s, young or old, learning experience. Most education systems put all their emphasis on the education itself, the fact that you are learning, that they forget about the results of that learning; what you do with your education. An essay or a piece of work is something you do with all you’ve learned, a result. There are people who spend their whole lives, people with Master’s degrees and Ph.Ds, writing essays and drawing and solving equations and editing poems, and you just did that, too. You deserve to know for sure that you’ve accomplished something with your 40,000 dollar education. People get so worried about what’s to come, like finals, symposiums, and presentations, that they forget that they’ve already done great things.

2. Which brings me to the second reason: to remind myself to just keep going. Video games and education are similar in that you are supposed to gain the skills necessary to complete the game/class as you play/learn. But that doesn’t mean the final level isn’t mind-meltingly difficult. Sometimes the hardest thing isn’t to move forward, to surpass your past self, but to simply continue at the same pace, to be peaceful. The world turns regardless, so you might as well continue to do great things while it does so.

Good luck for finals week, everyone!