You're getting an "A" at the end of the semester. What will you have done to deserve it?

I decided to take a little break from reading catastrophe memoirs, and I picked up The Art of Possibility, by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.

Benjamin Zander, a conductor, explains a technique—“giving an A”— he used in his class on the Art of Musical Performance. From experience, he knew his students would be so anxious about their grades that they wouldn’t take risks—yet taking risks was essential to their mastery.

So he announced that each student would get an A for the course.

“However,” he told them, “there is one requirement that you must fulfill to earn this grade…you must write me a letter dated next May…‘Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because…,’ and in this letter you are to tell, in as much detail as you can, the story of what will have happened to you by next May that is in line with this extraordinary grade.”

He includes some excerpts from students' letters, and they’re astonishing to read. Putting themselves in the future, the students wrote letters that described with extraordinary excitement and relief the goals they’d attained and the fears they’d surmounted. It was surprisingly moving.

It struck me that the Happiness Project is a bit like the “giving an A” approach. Although I frame the process differently, I imagine very clearly how I want my life to have changed, for the better, by the end of this year.

Eliminating grades might seem like a utopian strategy that wouldn’t work in any other context, but my law school used a lesser version. At Yale (at least when I was there), for that first terrifying semester, all first-year students got a “Pass” for their classes, unless they did something extreme—like refuse to take the exams. And for all three years, Yale Law School only awarded grades of “High Pass,” “Pass,” “Low Pass,” and “Fail.” Low Passes were quite rare; I’ve never heard of a Fail.

The funny thing is, most of the students—even the first-years—studied just as hard. But this system took the edge off considerably, and it allowed people to take much greater risks in what they chose to do. I wrote a paper about dread!

In our last year of law school, a friend had a funny experience at a job interview.

“What’s your class rank?” asked the interviewer.

“We don’t really get grades,” my friend said, and he explained the Yale system. “So we aren’t ranked.”

“But surely you must have some idea of your rank in the class. Approximately where do you stand?”

“I really don’t have any way to know, because I don’t know what other people get.”

“But you must have some idea,” the interviewer insisted. “Take a guess.”

“Well,” my friend said, “I’d guess I’m first in my class.”

So try this: imagine that it's December 2006, and you're very pleased with the "A" you received in recognition of all that you accomplished this semester. What will you have done to deserve that "A"?

Comments

[Mark Despotakis]

What a great book. So many great ideas. Still having a difficult time incorporating them into my life.

[Bruce Elkin]

I like the reference to "giving yourself an A" and the Zander's book. A thoroughly enjoyable read. I also loved the story about the law school student putting himself at the head of his class. Great. And, who knows, maybe he lived up to that ranking. I'd like to think so.
Thanks!
Bruce (Bruce@BruceElkin.com)

[Bebek]

A recent nugget from the I Ching:
Luck is the Residue of Design.

[Dean]

If you take the concept of "being a contribution" from the book and combine it with the "giving yourself and A" idea, then you have something that is very powerful and I think if we can pull it off those actions put us all at the head of the class.

[Bob Sutton]

I never made the connection to Zander's book, but as an old professor who has used the traditional system (well, I am not a very hard grader), my faith in it was challenged when, last year, a group of us taught a class in the new Hasso Plattner Institute for Design at Stanford on Creating Infectious Action. The students (working in groups) had some great successes (spreading Firefox in particular) and great failures (promoting hip-hop artists on the Stanford campus). We made a lot of mistakes as it was the first year, and one mistake I thought we were making was to tell them that they were getting all A's.. they still worked like dogs anyway (the grades really didn't matter when they faced the prospect of presenting their work to real gurus from Firefox, real hip-hop artists, and real Fidelity executives). And the knowledge they were all getting A's was especially useful after (despite very hard work) they failed to attract people to their hip-hop concert or sell their artists' CD's because they felt safe to talk about what they learned.

The lesson (I think...teaching is really hard to do well): Grades aren't nearly as motivating as the prospect of painful embarrassment versus sweet pride. I am a psychologist by training, but any sociologist can tell you that I am advocating Erving Goffman's work on "face" in this little story.

[eric m.]

I love this idea! Gotta check out the book... (p.s. hi Gretchen, just started reading your blog about two months ago and have been enjoying it a lot...)

[Cara]

Great idea! I had the good fortune of playing in an orchestra at summer camp (decades ago -- eep!) where Benjamin Zander was the guest conductor. He assigned us Mahler's First Symphony. In one week, we were able to pull off a decent performance of it. But more importantly, he inspired us like no other conductor that summer, doing everything possible (including dancing like a fool on the podium!) to make US believe that we could play it well. I think it's all about expecting the best from yourself and then living up to that expectation. I have to check out this book!

[Cara]

Oh, and by the way: the opening note and theme of Mahler's First? Octaves of A. Or as Zander put it, "a whole universe of A." It's even more meaningful now.

[Kristine]

I read the book for a Creativity class my second year of college (now in my third). Since reading the book, writing about it over and over again, and participating in engaging class discussions, I can safely say that those experiences revolving around The Art of Possibility has changed my life and finally set me straight as a Happy Person. Hope you read the whole thing and get a lot out of it. It was my own little happiness project. Good luck with yours.

I included a link to my own little project as my URL. This is the first I've posted it outside a small group of friends. Consider it ballsy. ;)