Students, I thought for a long time about a hook for my welcome remarks and finally settled on this: I have a secret formula that can boost not only your academic success but your finances and your fitness.
I learned this secret in Geology class in my first year of college. Specifically from Charles Lyell, one of the first to theorize about the Earth’s true age. Science department, are you with me?
Published in 1830, Lyell’s Principles of Geology is one of the most important works of science in human history. Nearly single-handedly, it deconstructed the popular notion that the Earth was 6,000 years old and that its topography had been built nearly instantaneously through catastrophes, specifically floods and earthquakes. What’s actually true is that erosion and tectonics sculpted the Earth over billions of years, a process known as uniformitarianism or incrementalism. It would have been much catchier to call it Lyell’s Law. The motto of uniformitarian science is the present is the key to the past. Tiny, unseen, and incremental changes add up.
Sidenote: Lyell’s book accompanied Charles Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle (his multi-year trip around the world), and its theories allowed him to understand that there was enough time for natural selection to occur. Together, these interrelated revolutions form the foundations of Biology and Geology.
As promised, the secrets to fitness and finance. As much as I tried, I can’t bankrupt or make myself wealthy in a day or a week, nor can I get myself in or out of shape quickly, but what I do incrementally over a number of weeks and years determines my physical and financial health. If you’ve been paying attention you can guess—the secret formula is daily, incremental progress. And don’t skip leg day.
I bring this up because it is possible that some are sitting here, particularly our younger students, thinking, “what in the actual heck does this assembly have to do with me”? And why is Mr. Schubach – normally so hilarious – talking about Geology? This assembly has everything to do with each of you. The awards we are about to give are not about perfection. They are about progress. Tiny, unseen, and incremental changes add up. The present isn’t just the key to the past; the present and how you spend it are the keys to your future. So please don’t think, like those who incorrectly believed in catastrophism, that these achievements happened quickly, randomly, or effortlessly.
Educational research has proven time and time again that your mindset matters in how much you achieve. If you conceptualize today’s award winners as talented kids who would have succeeded no matter what they did, you would be getting it wrong, and it might be easier for you to make the mistake of thinking that they have something that you don’t. The truth is the students receiving awards today have talent matched with hard work. And so can you Daily efforts and gritty determination build mountains and cut canyons not just on the earth but in every field of human endeavor.