Journey to the Pole

Amundsen and his team at the South Pole

One night in my first year of law school, I read this article from the Art of Manliness. I learned about 
Roald Amundsen, who set about becoming the first to reach the South Pole and he did it in a way in which steady and consistent progress coupled with meticulous planning ultimately led him to his success. I then thought about a lot of my failed endeavours and realized that the reason why I failed was not due to a lack of ability, but a lack of consistency and persistence.

Amundsen set about his goal by planning to march a fixed distance every single day regardless of the conditions they were under. Robert Falcon Scott, Amundsen's rival, in contrast chose to march in accordance with the weather. On good days Scott would push his team to walk many extra miles, while on bad days, the team might make no progress at all. Scott would ultimately fail to reach the Pole first and also tragically perished on his way back.

When I first created Course-Select to help University of Toronto students to pick out courses which fit their schedule, I had rushed to complete it before the course selection date of that year so that students can make good use of the tool. At the time, I had lots of ideas I still wanted to implement even after the basic functionality was complete. Unfortunately, after I had finally opened the site to hundreds of users, the lack of external motivation led me to abandon the site completely. As a result, what is left is a poorly-written tool which works and had lots of promise but no follow-through in terms of improvement.

Looking back on this, I decided that I should set out to do something with the same kind of consistency and persistence that Amundsen had in his journey to the South Pole. I decided that I would write a blog posting for every single working day with a word-count between 100 to 200 words. These are hard constraints that I plan to adhere to for at least six months. After that trial period, I will re-evaluate and possibly increase that number.

The theme I have chosen is something that has become my identity over the years. Growing up, and even up to this day, I have always been called a slacker. I have no patience for the obedience of institutionalized education, and I have always chosen to make my own way instead. Hopefully, throughout this new commitment to writing, I will be able to reveal and discover within myself some of the reasons why and how I have slacked my way through school.