At the end of August, on the first day of a new academic year, I stood in front to my students. I welcomed them. Some of the students had arrived on campus a few weeks to begin practices with their athletic teams. Some had arrived only a few days before. They had just completed an orientation program. This was the start of their college careers. We were beginning a course that would introduce the students to computer science. We planned to spend a lot of time learning how to write computer programs.
“Who plays a sport?” I asked. “Let’s count all kinds of sports. Varsity sports. Club and intramural sports. Team sports. Individual sports. Competitive sports. Physical activity for health, fitness, and recreation.”
As I expected, I found members of several of my college’s varsity teams in my class and I found golfers, skiers, and runners who belonged to no team.
A very friendly and very eager young man in the front row volunteered that he was a member of our college’s football team.
I looked for students with other interests.
“Who plays a musical instrument?”
Violinists and pianists raised their hands.
“Who is going to audition for the jazz band?” I asked. “For the choir?”
Now I knew a little about my students.
“If you are a musician, you probably attend concerts and listen to recordings. You draw inspiration from the performances of musicians who are more skilled than you. However, you know that you cannot master your instrument just by watching someone else play. Listening will help you advance. Guidance from a teacher will help you make progress. The sound of someone else playing and the words of a teacher, no matter how good that teacher is, are not enough. You know that you must practice.”
“If you are an athlete, you listen to a coach and you watch professional athletes on television. Maybe you read magazines and books that tell you how to be a better golfer or a better skier. However, I do not need to tell you that if your only preparation for a marathon is reading “Runners’ World” while lying on the couch, your experience on race day will be a miserable one.”
I paused. Had I made my point?
That friendly and eager young man in front of me asked, “Will we have to do any work outside of class?”
The coach of our football team is my friend. I took my student’s question to him and said, “I do not think he is very long for computer science.”
The coach replied, “I have seen the attitude that he brings to our workouts. He is not very long for football either.”
Dear Reader: Do you know the old joke about a visitor who, lost on the streets of Manhattan, asked someone that he guessed might be a native New Yorker, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The local person advised him to “Practice! Practice! Practice!”