Not necessarily hard, but unfamiliar

The cold might take some getting used to if you’re not from around here. (Image by Jill Wellington)

I don’t know where they learn it, but even lots of little kids are totally fixated on “easy” and “hard.”

They divide the world neatly into this organizational scheme, defined as follows: If can do it easily, it’s easy; if I can’t do it easily, it’s hard.

These kids are missing a lot of context, to say the least. They tend to relish what is easy, even as they treat it with a bit of scorn. Meanwhile, they resist what is hard, assuming that it will be out of reach.

As this pattern deepens over the years, students may struggle to even be willing to try hard things, preferring the safety and immediate gratification of discovering something is easy for them. What they don’t always realize is that hard things can become easy through sustained effort and practice.

Toward that end, my team and I work to shift the language we use. We teach students that the work is not necessarily hard, but unfamiliar. Instead of the black and white, “easy versus hard” mentality, we encourage students to see activities on a spectrum. That which is easy is most familiar; that which is difficult is the least familiar. Day by day, as they practice skills and gain knowledge, the less familiar gradually becomes more familiar.

This is helpful for two reasons. The first is that it decouples the student’s identity from the proceedings. The binary of easy/hard often gets tightly paired with a second: smart vs. dumb. The idea that “I’m smart, so things should be easy” is incredibly destructive and doesn’t leave room for students to grow. Students need to learn that when something is hard, that does not constitute proof that they are “dumb.” In fact, things that challenge them are helping them to gain knowledge and skill. The words “familiar” and “unfamiliar” don’t carry the judgment of “easy” and “hard” and don’t trigger the student’s desperation to prove that they are smart.

Second, the spectrum of familiar to unfamiliar puts the student in control. Instead of thinking of the task or the material itself as possessing qualities that make it easy or hard, they begin to see that their exposure to the material is what determines this. They realize that they can, through their own actions, change their perception of the work. If they want something to become more familiar, they have to spend more time with it and put more effort into it.

In order for students to learn this valuable lesson about the impact of their perseverance, they have to be offered the opportunity to do things they aren’t already good at — ideally, things that they can become good at in a short enough time frame that they will notice. Too many times to count, a student has whined, “This is harrrrrd” only to crow, “This is so easy!” ten minutes later. It makes me cringe, but it gives me an opportunity to help shift the language and reflect their progress back to them. It isn’t that the work is easy — it’s just familiar now. And we’ll repeat that cycle over and over.

Many disciplines that are perceived as difficult have many layers to them. If you’re not familiar with all of the layers, of course you’re going to struggle. You generally can’t decide to major in music or computer programming without prior experience. Ideally, you will have spent your teen years working through all of the layers. If you haven’t, four years is not going to be enough time to get up to speed and earn your degree. But these fields aren’t harder than chemistry or literary analysis. They just might not be as familiar.

True, it takes a measure of intelligence, or at least fortitude, to work through layers after layer of the unfamiliar in order to master a complex skill. However, the more attention we give into developing this ability, the stronger it will get. That’s right: The process of pursuing a challenging endeavor is, itself, something that can become familiar. It is one of the most important skills you can learn. Maybe it will never feel easy, but as we will learn along the way, that doesn’t have to prevent us from trying and succeeding.