A common observation of community college instructors lately is that many first-year students do not choose to do the assigned work.  In spite of warnings about GPA, financial aid problems, and wasted time, increasing numbers of students seem unable or unwilling to put the effort into passing their courses. I’ve had conferences with some of those students to find out what kinds of obstacles they face, and often they have shrugged their shoulders and admitted, “I just don’t want to do it.”

The “want to” part of success is something the individual has to decide.  To develop that capacity, I believe a person must experience “have to” first:  as in, I can’t play right now; I have to do chores for my mama.  People my age often say “I was made to work,” meaning they were required to work whether or not they wanted to do it.  We were fortunate that our parents taught us not to wait on feelings to get a job done, pushing us past the whiny I-don’t-want-to feeling level.

Our parents, in general, modeled strong work ethic. Their children’s feelings really didn’t matter when getting the job done was important.  Because of that, many of us learned that we would not die from hoeing an acre of corn or picking three long rows of beans or ironing an arm load of cotton shirts.  We gained the satisfaction of having persevered and finished a job in spite of our feelings to the contrary.

Watching a basketball game this past weekend, I remembered an incident that illustrated perfectly the drive and work ethic my mother possessed. Basketball was a natural sport for my mother in her youth since the sport demands running and running the entire game.  As the last of 14 children, she became the family “go-fer” when needs arose.  Mama recalled hearing her name called and always knew that the word “go” would follow.  Ruthie, go get the eggs! Ruthie, go milk the cow! She ran to the store down the road, ran over the hill to the neighbors, ran to the creek, and ran to milk the cows; in short, she ran everywhere.

Those strong muscles in her legs served her well as a basketball guard known for her tenacity.  She graduated high school and kept going on in life with that same attitude, even to the day of a major medical emergency in her 80’s. When a cardiologist came to examine her in cardiac ICU after aortic aneurysm surgery, she looked him square in the face and said, “I played basketball at Sandy Ridge.”

She didn’t want to be seen as weak, remaining a worker inside, the girl running the hills who needed to be up and about her work. During that same hospitalization, she, at 82 years of age, sighed one afternoon, “I need me a job.”

She had never been without a job, except when, in her late 70’s, she was injured at work and then began to decline in health.  Her extensive work history is long.  As soon as her youngest child entered school, mama took to the textile mill.  She worked in several, staying until the plant closed or moved, making sweatshirts, doing “piece work” sewing pockets in men’s pants, and running elastic in an elastic factory.  She never stopped because at home she gardened, canned vegetables, sewed, went to the tobacco barn, and took care of children. She commissioned art work, painting pictures of old home places for her coworkers. When textiles left the area, she drove thirty miles and worked as a hostess at a motel serving complimentary breakfast, dining room cleaner at a fast food restaurant, checker and stocker at two different big box stores, a store door greeter, and a sales clerk at an art store.  If there was work, she would find it.

That work defined her and most others of her generation.  While their children, the Baby Boomers, were raised under different circumstances, we are still cut from the same basic cloth.  We came along knowing that people have to work for what they get.  I tried to raise my children to understand that concept, a task increasingly hard in our self-serving culture.

So, I do marvel when some students feel entitled to pass a course without doing the work, and I do feel sorry for them in one sense: they will miss another kind of feeling, the deep feeling of accomplishment at having done something difficult and succeeded.

Maybe next time around they will realize that they, feelings aside, have to do it.