Show Your Work

And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts until the time of his shewing unto Israel. Luke 1:80

I graduated from St. Francis Preparatory Church in Fresh Meadows, New York. The school was named after St. Francis of Assisi, an Italian Christian who walked away from a life of privilege to serve the poor. Most of the administrators and teachers in the school were monks, (as was St. Francis), which is not a popular vocation these days. Monasticism was a movement that emerged within the Catholic Church during medieval times that attracted large numbers of men and women who decided to remain single, forego ownership of any possessions, and spend their lives serving others. 

One of my favorite teachers was Brother George. He was a short, slender, fit man who moved with the grace and discipline of a dancer and taught with the intensity of a tiger. His classroom was truly his throne. Not only did he take his vocation as a teacher seriously, he took his students seriously as well. Brother George taught me something that was not only helpful in trigonometry class, but also in life.

Trigonometry equations are notoriously complex. One equation can have multiple parts, and it is very easy to get all the parts confused. To be honest, I don't remember anything about trigonometry, and am absolutely positive that I've never used any of the formulas we learned since the 11th grade. But in Brother George's class, there was a rule. To get full credit on an exam, you simply could not provide the right answer. You also had to show your work. He used to say if you got the right answer but didn't show your work, you would not get full credit. But if you got the wrong answer and showed your work, you would get extra credit! Brother George instructed us to number each step as we worked through each problem, and he would not accept homework nor exams without both the answers and the steps. What I saw then as unnecessary busywork, I see now as a crucial life lesson. Brother George was teaching us to value the process over the result.

It is important to be results oriented. We all want results! We want better results on our jobs, in our relationships, and with our goals. But many of us fail to appreciate the relationship between our process and our results. The former usually explains the latter. If you want to change your results, examine the steps you took to get there. If you "show your work" you can see exactly where your thinking, praying, or choosing was off.  

Jesus said that John the Baptist was the greatest prophet who ever lived. But his greatness cannot be understood apart from the process he underwent. Luke informs us that his strength was developed in the deserts of Israel. No deserts, no strength. Show me your process and you show me your result.

You cannot cheat the process. You'll get the wrong answer every time.