Pride - A Few More Thoughts

I've been reflecting on the thoughts I posted earlier about pride, and I'm pretty sure that there is more to say on the subject.  Perhaps it's because I'm having difficulty sleeping in the middle of a snowstorm that's got me so contemplative, but that earlier post has been rattling around in my head like a song that I just can't shake.  So, I thought I would take a shot at putting some of those "rattlesome" thoughts down.

But, first a digression.  I have worked directly in the field of instructional technology for more than a decade, and I've been involved with educational initiatives in general for nearly 25 years (just typing that makes me feel old, and my go-to line whenever that happens is to say that "I'm much to young to be this old").  I only say this here in order to give you some sense of scale when I talk about how often I've been involved with discussions of "BADGES!".  It seems like every few months I'm involved with some meeting where someone will raise the idea of badges as a way to provide feedback to students/identify mastery of content/provide a record for posterity/identify workplace skills for employers/etc... I could go on listing these justifications, but I won't, though it certainly seems like the reasons why people think badges in education are a good idea are as numerous as conversations will allow. 

My response usually ranges from mild interest to utter bafflement during these sessions.  Not because I think that badges are uninteresting or don't hold potential, but because I usually find that the people who are proposing these systems have a faulty sense of what motivates people.  For the most part, they have the "if you build it, they will come" mentality, and that entirely misses the point.  They believe either that the badges themselves will motivate individuals to participate or that the usability of the badges will be what motivates them (in other words, "my future employer will value my badges, so I'll take them seriously").  Both of these reasons are entirely off base, in my opinion.

The reality of the situation is that the only thing that would ever make badges worthwhile in educational settings is if students have pride in what they represent (I'm sure you were wondering when the digression would make it's way back around to pride).  That doesn't come from the badge itself or from a belief that future employers will value them.  It comes from an intrinsic value placed on achieving whatever the badge signifies.

As an example, I have received badges for some pretty kooky things.  I once received a "Conference Attendance" Badge because I picked up my registration at a conference.  How meaningful was that badge, do you think?  How much pride did I take in that accomplishment?  If your answer to that is anything more that "Zero", you're likely to love badging systems.  In fact, it had a negative impact on my affect, because I started really wondering about the quality of sessions I could expect to see at a conference that did something so transparently childish to its attendees.  After all, I may have been happy getting a gold star in Kindergarten, but I like to think that it takes more than a sticker to gain my affections now.

In fact, the only electronic badges that I've ever really valued were those from my early days participating in Tough Mudders.  I think they still give them out for participating in events, and while I don't do much with them anymore, I remember feeling tremendous pride in sharing those earliest ones on Facebook.  They represented something greater than a few pixels on a screen.  They represented all of the hard work that I had put into getting back into shape.  They represented my willingness and ability to engage with something difficult.  Most importantly, they represented my new passion.

But as I said, I don't do anything with those badges now.  They have lost that same meaning.  They no longer represent the pride I have in my abilities.  And, quite honestly, if badges for something that I'm obviously passionate about don't maintain their interest for me, then it's VERY unlikely that meaningless badges would.  This doesn't mean that I don't have pride in my accomplishments, it simply means that I get more enjoyment out of the tangible results of my participation.  This goes beyond my headband collection (which is quite glorious, if I do say so myself - and just to be clear, I don't want to hear any cracks about how many 10X headbands I have), and includes old Team Bad News shirts and photos from my events. 

I guess the lesson that I would take from this is to think hard about what badges, tokens, and mementos represent to the people we work with in educational settings.  As leaders and teachers, we can get away with some gimmicks for a little while, but unless the people actually value what underlays those gimmicks, they will grow stale very quickly.  Worse yet, they may backfire on you.  Learn from the "Conference Attendance" badge...don't assume that these things will be seen in a positive light.

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Pride in our Accomplishments

As 2018 gets under way, I've begun to reflect on my 2017 race and event schedule.  The first event of the year was the Virginia Beach Ultra 100k run, which was a glorious failure.  I didn't reach the 100K, but I did stay on the course the entire time and ran farther than I ever had before (92K in 12 and a half hours).  I also had my best 50 mile time during that race (9 hours and 40 minutes).  So, while I didn't hit my goal of 100K, I still feel good about my experience.  In fact, if I had hit the cutoff time with only one lap left to hit the 100K, I would have kept going outside of the race window just to finish.  But, with 2 full laps left, no headlamp, and pitch dark outside, I figured I would take the 57+ miles and call it a win.

This has got me thinking about what I'm most proud of from what I accomplished in 2017.  As I've already stated, I ran 92K in my first event, but additionally, I completed 15 laps at 14 regular Tough Mudder events, and I ran in the overnight America's Toughest Mudder (completing 20 miles in 8 hours) at the Atlanta course.  All of those are fun and I feel tremendous pride in them, but they aren't what I'm proudest of from this past year.  That would be my run of Hadrian's Wall in June.

A little bit of background first.  For those of you who may not be familiar, Hadrian's Wall was built between 122 AD and 128 AD under the orders of the Roman Emperor Hadrian to act as the Northern boundary of the Roman Empire in Britain (In other words, it was built to keep the "barbarians" living in modern day Scotland from invading).  It ran from Bowness-on-Solway in the West to Wallsend in the East, and effectively put a wall across the entirety of the country.  It is a very popular hiking destination for people who live in or visit England, and it has a very well marked path for hiking anywhere along its 84 mile length. For most of its length, the path follows the historic positioning of the wall, crosses through cities and countryside, goes through public and private property, involves crossing a large number of sheep and cow pastures, and at its most majestic will follow along craggy hills overlooking England and Scotland.  Much of the wall itself is gone now, with only about 30 miles remaining in the middle section of the country.  What remains is rarely more than two or three feet high, but it can be an impressive sight to see.

As for me, I lived in England from 2003 to 2005, and spent a good amount of time traveling around with my wife and son.  We visited Hadrian's Wall a couple times, and I even hiked about 10 miles of the wall in the summer of 2005 before I came back to the US.  It had always been a desire to hike the entire length, but once I moved back to the US I figured that wasn't likely to happen.  I wasn't going to make a trip to the UK just to do it, and no opportunities had presented themselves to get back there for any length of time.  So, I had pretty much resigned myself to having it on my bucket list, and perhaps doing something about it when I retire.  However, an opportunity arose in June that would allow me to be in England for 3 days on my way to Portugal for a conference, so I decided to take the jump.

There are several companies that will organize a tour of the wall for you (including the logistics of making hotel arrangements and moving luggage to and from various locations), so I found one that offered two day running options.  For a fee, they made hotel reservations for all three nights I would need, they sent me maps and information about the path, and they prepared me for the two days of running that it would take to go from East to West.  I started early in the morning on June 22nd from Wallsend, and spent much of the morning running through the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  I didn't actually reach any actual wall ruins until early in the afternoon, and stopped to take a picture when I first saw the wall itself.  It wasn't until later, when I was looking at maps of the journey, that I realized that the picture I took was approximately 26.2 miles from the beginning of the trail.  That's right, I ran a marathon along Hadrian's Wall path before I saw any of the actual wall. Not only that, I had another 16 miles to run before I was done for the day.

I reached my hotel in the tiny village of Twice Brewed sometime around 7 pm after nearly 11 hours of running, and promptly ate a huge quantity of food (actually, I shouldn't say "promptly" here because I did take a nice long, hot epsom-salt bath first).  The food and drink were particularly welcome after having run nearly 44 miles through some relatively rugged terrain.  The Twice Brewed Inn is legitimately in the middle of nowhere, but it was a nice stopping point for my first day.

The second day, I started my run in a drizzly rain at about 6 am, and had to make my way through the city of Carlisle.  I had visited this city before, while I had been living in England, but it was an entirely different experience passing through.  There was a bit of construction along the path, which shunted me off into main streets, and I had a pretty difficult time finding my way back to the path until I was about 6 miles to the West outside of town.  From there, it was a pretty straight run through some fantastic bogs to the end point in Bowness-on-Solway.  Having run several ultra marathons previously, I was pretty well prepared nutritionally and fitness-wise for the endeavor, but the last four miles were tough.  Even though the terrain was flat, and the path was clear, it was difficult nonetheless.  I had heard of people who run marathons talking about how they had to negotiate with themselves as they get along the race, and make deals with themselves to ensure they kept going, but I hadn't really felt that need in any of my previous events.  That changed for the last four miles, though.  I can unabashedly say that I negotiated nearly every step of those four miles.  And, while difficult, I found my way to the end point of the trail.

Exhausted and elated, I immediately picked up my bags at the hostel I had already paid for, got a cab, and drove to the train station in Carlisle that I had actually run past a few hours earlier.  I did this to catch a train to Lancaster, where I would be staying with friends from when I lived there 15 years ago.   An hour and a half later, after a shower, I was sitting at dinner with friends I hadn't seen in nearly a decade, and all of the difficulty of the run was gone.  I had successfully run 84 miles over pretty grueling terrain over the course of two days, and come out the other side stronger than before.  Back-to-back ultra marathons were never in my plans, but I wouldn't change the experience for the world.  Which brings me to the lesson that I took from this event and my reflections on what I accomplished last year.

Specifically, the lesson of PRIDE.  I was raised as a Catholic, and had always been told that pride was a sin (in fact, it's one of the 7 deadly sins).  As such, it was always frowned upon to be proud or to demonstrate too much pride.  I never really understood that when I was a kid.  Gluttony, Sloth, Envy...the other deadly sins, I could "get".  I understood why those would be bad, but why would pride be discouraged? Now that I'm older, and have things to be proud about, I'm able to put the world into less black and white terms.  Yes, pride can be a negative, but it isn't necessarily.  Pride in our accomplishments is usually what keeps bringing us back for more.  In educational settings, we say that we want to celebrate our accomplishments and demonstrate our joy in our achievements.  As such, it implies that we should be proud of those accomplishments and achievements.  There's nothing wrong with that, as long as we keep moving forward.

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New and Returning Obstacles for 2018

So, Tough Mudder just announced a couple new obstacles.  The first is called "Happy Endings", and appears to be evidence of the old adage that "bigger is better":

Not actual size

I'm on the fence as to whether this is anything more than a knock-off from various other racing organizations.  Savage Race has the Colossus, which is an oversized ramp on one side and then a slide into water on the other side.  Happy Endings tries to up the scare factor by incorporating electricity for one part of the slide.  I've seen a few people on Facebook saying "what's the worst that could happen" while posting the following GIF:

Because this dude looks disturbingly like me, I find it necessary to state that
no Gazelles were harmed in the making of this GIF.

However, having said all of that, I'm not all that disappointed that this is just a bigger version of Pyramid Scheme and Everest.  Or that it's just a knockoff of the Colossus.  After all, there's only so much you can do with obstacles.

The thing that disappoints me is that (based on what I've heard so far) this is pretty much forced to be a group activity.  I'm not averse to helping people up on an obstacle, or asking for help myself, but any obstacle that cannot legitimately be done individually is pretty crappy in my book.  I continue to try and make it up Everest 2.0 by myself.  I fail at that every time, but I give it a shot.  If the ropes are down on Pyramid Scheme, it's actually a pretty easy obstacle to get up by yourself.  There may be something I'm not seeing that would make this doable by yourself, but everyone who has attempted this obstacle has said that it takes a village to conquer.  If you go out in one of the early waves, it's likely you'll reach this monstrosity all by your lonesome, which means you're all alone in your shame as you walk around it (not that I would ever do that, though).  Of course, this is all conjecture, since I haven't actually seen this thing on a course yet, so it may be that there is some way to do it alone.  I would assume that the folks in charge of Tough Mudder have thought this through, and will do something to address it.  If that's the case, then I look forward to the challenge of beating this monstrosity.

The lesson that we might be able to learn from this for education is that it's important to take into account the context in which activities take place.  As Americans we have this mindset of being able to "go it alone" and to "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps" and become "self-made men".  All of this is BS, of course, since the reality is that we are the result of all our interactions.  Our successes and our failures are the result of all of the help that we've received along the way.  This would seem to counter my whole point complaining that this obstacle can't be done alone, but that's not quite how I see it.  The help that we are provided doesn't have to come in the form of a helping hand at the top of an obstacle.  It doesn't have to come in the form of a tower of people we crawl up as we ascend.  Rather, the help can come in the form of the obstacle designers understanding the psychology of wanting to test ourselves, and provide an opportunity to at least try.  We may end up needing help, but having that as a prerequisite for success can be counterproductive unless we are actually given the resources necessary to succeed.

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WTM Dreams

I don't think it's any big secret that we've not really been keeping up with the blog recently (ok, if we're honest, for a year or so), but life gets busy, moves on, and laughs at people who think that it's under their control.

The purpose of this post isn't to describe everything that's happened since the last time I posted, but rather to describe a dream that I had last night.  Recently, I've been having odd dreams about WTM.  Just as a quick recap, I ran WTM 13 (New Jersey), WTM 14 (Vegas) and WTM 16 (Vegas again).  I wasn't able to run the 2017 event due to various life circumstances, but I followed along on the website as Danny ran and Brian pitted.  I wasn't super happy about not being able to be in Vegas, but it couldn't really be helped, so I sucked it up and did my best.

Well, apparently, I must have some issues with missing out because I've been having dreams about various obstacles and races.  Last night's dream was about an obstacle that required the participant to download an app on their phone as they approached a field full of various household objects.  In the middle of the field was a wall.  The app would inform the participant the specifics of the task that needed to be done with the objects and the results would be judged by a volunteer observer.

The first time I approached the obstacle I was shocked to hear that I would need my phone given the fact that there was a lot of swimming in the event and I couldn't figure how I would keep the phone dry throughout the rest of the race.  As with most dreams that thought quickly fled as my phone appeared in my hand.  I dutifully downloaded the app and was told that I needed to do something called "Power Outage", which came down to finding something that would normally move under its own power and then carrying it across the field.  I found a weed-eater and decided that it had moving parts, which was good enough for me.  I picked it up, climbed over the wall with it and dropped it on the other side.  The volunteer observer nodded at me to indicate that was an approved item and I ran on.

The second time I approached the field, I looked at the app and was told I would have to do something called "Simple Machining" which was described as finding objects to build a simple machine.  I found a Nerf football and a board, carried them over the wall, and put them together to create an Inclined Plane.  I showed this to the observer and he shook his head.  I was flummoxed.  An Inclined Plane is pretty much the dictionary definition of a simple machine, and I told him so.  He said that it wasn't a machine at all, and I would fail the obstacle.  I told him that was unacceptable given the fact that any Google search would show him the six simple machine forms that he should have learned in elementary school.  He got indignant and decided that he wasn't going to allow me to continue, so I decided to take a different tack.  Given the fact that I had my phone, and assuming that he simply misunderstood the distinction between simple and complex machines, I offered to Google it for him.  He accepted, but wanted conditions.  He said that if I was wrong, I would have to stop running the race two hours before the cutoff time.  Figuring this was a negotiation at this point, I told him I wouldn't do that, but I would take a 10 minute penalty.  I knew I was right, so I wouldn't have lost anything by accepting his initial condition, but I didn't want him to have even the small victory of me agreeing to his demands.  He agreed to my counter proposal, and with the conditions of the negotiation agreed upon I pulled out my phone to Google the answer, and then I woke up...

It was 3:15 in the morning.  My wife was asleep in the bed next to me.  My children were asleep in the living room (a long story in itself).  And I was laying in my bed seething.  I laid in my bed for nearly 45 minutes silently brooding on the idiocy of the made-up guy in my dream.  I got so wrapped up in this dream scenario that I started to question my own knowledge about simple machines.  After all, it was a long time ago.  Maybe an inclined plane isn't a simple machine after all.  I had to get up, since it became clear to me that I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep without finishing that damn Google search.  I'm happy to say that I wasn't wrong.  An inclined plane is a simple machine.  I wouldn't have had that 10 minute penalty. I did lose a night of sleep, though, so that could have worked out better for me.

I guess the lesson to learn from this is that you can get TOO invested in things like this.  It is tough to take the emotions out of the various straw-man arguments that we make for ourselves, but it's silly to lose sleep over these things. 

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