Difficulty is the Excuse History Never Accepts

by | Feb 19, 2009 | Sue Grafton | 0 comments

“Difficulty is the Excuse History Never Accepts.” – Sue Grafton

I may also add it is the excuse no art instructor worth his or her salt would ever accept either.

When I use to hear the rationale ‘but I worked really hard on it’ I would always have to throw some water on the fire with this: ‘Your work being good is not a function of it being hard to do, it is a function of it being a good idea well executed, whether it took a year, or a minute.’

People don’t like to hear that. It is natural to want some credit for doing something difficult. And you should get credit, but it is direct credit. If you do something difficult the reward is ‘I am proud of you, you did something difficult’. The reward isn’t indirect. It doesn’t guarantee that what you created with difficulty is good.

It is especially hard to have this attitude with your kids, and it is heartbreaking to see your child do something with hard work and lots of sweat, only to find they got a C or a no comment, or even a harsh critique. But if you are helping them in the best way possible you will praise their hard work, reassure them of the good that is actually in the work and start to teach them the lesson that hard work doesn’t guarantee success, but it does guarantee progress and insight.

If you do that, then their self-esteem will not be attached only to their successes but to their failures and setbacks as well. And THAT is when their self-esteem will stay with them forever.

Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com

Difficulty is the Excuse History Never Accepts

by | Dec 9, 2008 | Sue Grafton | 1 comment

“Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.” – Sue Grafton

Having been an avid history reader for many years I agree with this.

When I read this quote I think about my years teaching. I so often got that excuse from my students as sort of plea. They wanted me to use the difficulty of a project as a reason to grade them better than their work really deserved. “But I worked really hard on it” they would say. My response was always the same; “Hard work doesn’t matter if the end product isn’t any good”. They didn’t like that.

I would explain. That in art history people don’t say ‘oh, it was really hard to build that giant sculpture so Michelangelo can be excused for making the head all caddywumpus and ugly’. No, if the ‘David’ wasn’t great nobody would have cared how much work went into it, how hard it was. In the end, the piece has to be great, no matter if it was a lucky shot that took a second, or was planned for years. The art is what matters, not the ‘difficulty’.

Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com