I’ve been thinking a lot about how to be more productive in my scholarship lately.  A  challenge and a blessing I’ve found in the Ph.D. program is that there is always something to do.  The challenge becomes learning to select which of the many opportunities to take advantage of.  I think I found a key to answering this question in a conversation I had with some colleagues on the bus today. One of my colleagues commented that you have to get to a point that you enjoy doing your work for its own sake.

I have pondered this evening how I can get to a point of enjoying scholarship for its own sake to such an extent that I can enjoy it every day. Paradoxically, I believe the solution lies in working at it every day. Just as I can’t expect to expect to comfortably bicycle a mile after a long period of sedentary living. I need to consistently exercise my scholarship every day. Gradually, it will become easier and less mechanical, just as running, playing sports, and dancing become easier to us.

I am reminded of a sermon I heard once relating how a young man was consistently teased by his peers for being unable to throw a baseball between two bases.  He resolved to win the championship of the territory. After purchasing a baseball, this young man practiced for hours, throwing the ball at his neighbor’s barn until his arm was sore.  He kept at it and eventually played on the team that won the territorial championship.

It’s like Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased.”

As I face the end of the hiring season without an academic position, I feel like that young man who was left out of the ball game, because he couldn’t throw straight enough and far enough. I need to be like him and hunker down and start practicing. I need to set daily goals that are simple enough to do every day, and just exercise until I get strong enough to succeed.