An honors course is an opportunity to do extra work for the sake of proving that you’re a person who is willing to do extra work.

You can’t fake it and you can’t delegate it, both for the purposes of your own learning and for the credit due. There are no shortcuts. A top student must be thorough and conscientious. Efficiency is not a priority; the teacher doesn’t actually need 25 different papers on the same subject. Grasping an esoteric concept takes hours that don’t translate to productivity, per se—that’s not what it’s for. In academia, we’re not looking to accomplish things more quickly and easily. As in weight lifting, the point is the hard work and effort.

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I can lump my middle school students into two brutally overgeneralized categories: those who crave drama and those who enjoy life without it.

Amusingly and frustratingly, a student of the first type almost always pretends to be the second. “I just don’t want all this drama, you know? But I just can’t seem to escape it.”

When it is pointed out to him that he could choose to associate with classmates who are drama-free, he will retort that everyone is full of drama and there is no alternative.

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When I first started rowing, there was a heavy amount of exertion with little result.

I was stressed, frustrated, tired, and I had blisters on the palms of my hands — and after all that work, my strokes were sloppy and weak.

Now, my stroke is harder, cleaner, and more effective. I have some handy calluses on my hands to help me along. I have better stamina because my work is more targeted — I engage specific groups of muscles instead of desperately trying to maneuver the oar with my whole body. And I no longer feel overwhelmed and about to cry.

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The Bahá’í period of fasting takes place in early March and ends with the Vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere.

Adults abstain from food and drink during daylight hours. It is a time of reflection, renewal, and hungry afternoons. Some days are euphoric, and some are really tough — sometimes at the same time.

On those harder days, I find myself reflecting on how I took lunch for granted. I always think that when the Fast is over, life will be so easy. I’ll just be able to have a snack whenever I need one! I’ll be able to concentrate easily all day, and I won’t have to plan my mornings around eating before dawn.

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Challenging problems aren’t the ones that require a lot of labor. They are the ones that require thinking.

It is a huge mistake to focus on labor and think we’re doing such hard work. Maybe we’re actually being lazy by not coming up with a cleverer strategy for avoiding all that work.

We can use math as good metaphor to explain this idea. The brilliant Prealgebra book from The Art of Problem Solving teaches students to think algebraically — that is, strategically — about math, even no variables are present.

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