Jump Through College Hoops Like a Badass

By Lon W. Schiffbauer, BA, MBA, PhD, SPHR

You want a license or certification? Jump through these hoops and it’s yours. Want a college degree? There you go, there are some hoops. Start jumping.

So, what does it mean to jump through hoops? Well, in general it means to have to complete a series of, for the most part, meaningless, complicated, or annoying steps to get whatever it is you want. I also include busy-work in this definition—work with relatively little value, designed to simply keep us busy.

And if you’ve been on this earth for any amount of time, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

So, why? Why do we erect these seemingly pointless huddles for people to jump through?

Well, to offer up my take, let’s have a look at a college degree, an accomplishment to which the road is paved in a series of seemingly endless hoops.

We—and by “we” I mean college professors—we really are trying to assess something important, but we have yet to find an effective way of doing so. I’ll give you an example: online discussions. You know: submit a response to the discussion prompt then reply to at least two other students with a substantive response. The intent of this assignment is to assess student comprehension of the topic and facilitate something resembling classroom discussion in an asynchronous online environment.

Problem is, a prescriptive series of steps with an attached rubric is a poor substitute for the organic and spontaneous experience of in-class discussion. We know this, but for a variety of reasons the practice of online discussions is kind of the solution of choice. So, in our attempt to assess important learning objectives, we inadvertently create a series of hoops that become the objective rather than the metric. By this I mean we measure whether the student completed all the steps, not the insights and understandings expressed in these steps.

Another reason academia erects these hoops is because we’ve decided what it means to be an educated person. Actually, we didn’t decide; academia decided centuries ago that only a person schooled on the European model of classical education could be considered an educated person. This means spending a couple years doing your “generals,” becoming at least somewhat versed in the classical literary works, history, rhetoric, philosophy, logic, and so on.

Now to fair, I’m a fan of what general education provides. And speaking for myself, I can’t think of anything that would be more self-actualizing than taking random classes in just about any topic. And in truth, I think academia attract this kind of curious person. We love to learn and get paid to pontificate. But while this speaks to my own domain of self-worth, it almost certainly doesn’t speak to the way we all learn and grow. For many students—if not most—the GenEd classes are nothing but a series of hoops that need to be navigated to earn a degree.

Finally, I think a lot of us are just plain lazy and lost.

Let me explain.

There aren’t any easy answers when it comes to have best to teach, engage, and assess student learning. Trust me, if there was a straightforward solution, we would have implemented it ages ago. Now to be sure, there are lots of different ideas and practices out there. We’ve even given it a fancy word: pedagogy. It basically means teaching approach or methodology. But it’s all a crapshoot. Some approaches work better than others, but there’s no silver bullet, and nothing will guarantee success. What’s more, many faculty are teaching several classes to hundreds of students each semester, so there needs to be an element of process and efficiency included in the formula. As a result, since there’s no one perfect approach that wins every time, and we need to help hundreds of students the best we can, we rely on the “greatest hits”: discussions, reflection essays, exams, signature assignments—in other words, hoops.

Alright, enough of my diatribe. Hoops are out there; they’re not going anywhere; you get it.

But now here’s the question: what are you going to do with these damned things? Let’s take your GenEd classes, for example. Are you just going to turn off your brain for two years and mindlessly jump through these things, resigned to the inevitability that there’s no perceived benefit to be derived from these classes? That’s a pretty bleak vision, so let’s see what we can do to make it a little less nihilistic.

Here’s how to jump through a hoop with style.

First, look for something you can get out of the exercise that aligns with your own interests and goals. Sure, you’ll want to deliver on what the assignment is asking for, but you already know you can do that with a minimum investment of energy. So, with that in the bag and the points a foregone conclusion, what can you get out of the assignment that actually has meaning to you?

It’s all about understanding the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. When we do something for extrinsic reasons, we’re doing it for the external rewards, things like pay, or in the case of college, points leading to a good grade. In other words, we’re doing it because we need to, not because we want to. On the other hand, when we do something for intrinsic reasons, we’re doing it because we want to. And why do we want to do it? Because it’s something we choose to do; versus something we’re told to do. It gives us a sense of purpose and enjoyment, as well as challenges us to improve continuously.

One of the best life hacks you can ever develop is to learn how to turn an extrinsic task into an intrinsic task. We all have shit we have to get done—hoops we have to jump through; that’s just the human condition. No one’s going to change that, but what we can change is why we do what we have to do.

In other words, the difference between hating a task and loving a task rests in the why of the task, and you control the why.

In the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur comes across a couple of peasants toiling in the mud. Of course they’re toiling away in the filth because they’re peasants living on the lord’s land and they need to survive, but that’s not their why. In their minds they’re an autonomous collective working on their own behalf. This doesn’t change what’s required of them; they’re still forced to toil in the filth, but they are not doing it because the lord has decreed it; they’re doing it for their own reasons.

So let me give you an example of how I’ve used this approach in my own career. One thing I’m required to do as a professor at Salt Lake Community College is maintain an ePortfolio, basically a website that details everything I’ve done each academic year. Why? I’m not even going to try to answer that. Sure, there’s a handful of answers my employer would have if I asked, but it’s bullshit. It’s simply bureaucratic inertia at its best. But I have to do it; it’s an extrinsic reality. However, that’s not why I do it; that’s not my why, anyway. I do it as a journaling exercise, as a way for me to take stock of what I’ve done and what I have yet to do to meet my personal life objectives. It’s a chance for me to reflect on where my career is going and determine what adjustments I need to make the following academic year. I actually really enjoy this sort of thing, taking stock of where I am and bumping this up against my goals, so when it comes time to update my ePortfolio, I derive a great deal of value from the exercise.

This is just one example; I have many more, but you get the idea. Through the course of your life you’ll be presented with innumerable hoops. Embrace this life hack and turn these hoops into something of value—a value that you decide.

Lon is an Associate Professor of Business Management at Salt Lake Community College and holds an MBA, a PhD, and is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). In addition to his academic background, Lon spent close to 30 years working and consulting for such companies as FedEx, Intel, eBay, and PayPal, as well as a variety of small to mid-sized companies around the world.