A mentor I once worked with required her clients to come with questions.

She wasn't the person to go to when you needed to talk things out. She didn't want to hear the ideas, the works-in-progress, or the emotional processing, and she definitely didn't want to hear the whining.

Instead, you showed up with a distinct, discrete question. If you didn't offer a question and instead launched into a bunch of context and backstory, you would be politely interrupted and asked to formulate a question.

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“I can’t get anyone to buy from me!”

“Did you ask anyone to buy from you? Did you offer them something to buy?”

“…No.”

I might chuckle about people missing these basics, except I know I’ve missed them, too. For example, I would always fall behind on my bookkeeping—like doing an entire year’s worth two weeks before the tax deadline—and I wondered why. The reason was incredibly simple: I wasn’t making any room on my schedule to do this work.

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You may remember study hall as social hour—I know I do.

With minimal supervision, my friends and I wrote notes to each other, passed around headphones to listen to music, chatted, and flirted.

But that was in high school, when our study habits (or lack thereof) were firmly established and socializing was our priority. When we went home, some of us did the work and some of us did not. Where did we learn these habits? In middle school. And that’s where educators have a unique opportunity to teach students not only the material under study, but how to study, setting them up for successful careers in high school and beyond.

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It’s the moment of truth. We’ve clearly identified a problem, and it’s time to pivot to solutions.

“Now that you see this pattern, what will you do differently?”

“I guess I’ve just got to try harder to stay on top of my work,” she says.

It sounds right. It sounds virtuous. It sounds like a reasonable thing to say to get your teacher/boss/mom/coach off of your back. But of course, nothing really changes as a result of “trying harder.” If the way we’re doing it isn’t working, trying to do more of the same isn’t going to help.

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When I was in my early twenties, I loved a succession of musical artists that I had only discovered through nerdy magazines.

I loved music that I had heard about from friends, too. And music I found about from the hipsters who worked at the record stores I frequented. But my appetite for new music could never be sated. I was always looking for more. Whenever I traveled, I was on a quest. Then, the expanding Internet made my job easier, but endless.

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