Satisficing

Do you want to know what I find most frustrating about school?

I already know how to do this stuff.

Sure, I could be taking finance classes and cost-benefit analysis but I know myself. I will never take a job that requires those skills.

So, I'm taking classes in my interest areas because I want leadership skills and content-area knowledge. But the trade-off is that the homework for these classes are just practicing skills I already have. I gave a five-minute presentation in one class and the professor told me it was great. That was it. Just great. Nothing to improve, even the stuff I brought up as unsatisfactory to me. I'm currently working on a neighborhood overview of a local neighborhood. I've already done a better and much more thorough analysis of the neighborhood I used to work in. In fact, the college intern did the kind of work I'm doing now so that I could do the higher-level stuff. In several classes I have to design a policy to respond to a community problem. Again, something I've already done but for real and at a much higher level. These projects take three hours of research where the stuff I've done for work has taken weeks.

So this is all just busy work.

But busy work that takes time and energy that I don't really have. I'm happy to do all the reading in the world. That's stuff I don't know. But this crap? This is what you're grading me on? I wrote a paper a couple of weeks ago that was a glorified book report that was also supposed to reference the other readings for that week. I satisficed and just wrote a book report without references and only lost 2 points out of 20.

But I have to get the 18 points or I won't pass. In a trade-off between 0 and 18, I have to put in the time to get the 18.

I'm a little pissed off, can you tell? I'll give you a hint: you can tell I'm pissed when I lose all humility. Yup, definitely right there.