Like You Mean to Go Pro

Our own Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman made his stance clear when he lectured to undergraduates at Caltech: he knew that most of the students in the room would never become professional physicists, and yet he taught to the level of the most gifted students there, the ones likely to become physicists themselves. In other words, he chose to pour his full effort into the one or two exceptionally sharp students in the class who would go on to become physicists, and he said so openly.

He disliked watering things down simply because a class was meant for beginners, and believed that teaching physics in its true form, without evasion or condescension, would ultimately be the most honest and the most rewarding thing for every student.

In the preface to The Feynman Lectures on Physics, he looks back on the experiment with characteristic humility and admits that it did not succeed equally for everyone, and may even have confused many students; but perhaps that very height of ambition is why his books are still loved all over the world.

I have always liked that stance, and whenever the occasion arose, I tried to make that level feel like the natural one.
When I was the one teaching, I took the student with the highest ability and the highest aspirations as my standard, and dealt with my pupils on the assumption that they were going to become professionals, without ever patronizing them. And when I was the one being taught, no matter how temporary the position was, I would truly believe that I was going to live by that path for the rest of my life, and commit myself on that premise.
Whether as a teacher or as a student, I believed that this would, in the end, make that time one of real consequence in both our lives.
(And in fact, there have been times when this really did lead me to continuing professional work.)

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Some might scoff if I said that, when I was devoted to aerial, I was pursuing it in earnest with the intention of going pro. For that claim was physically at odds with another aspect of my own stance: I had already set a limit on how long I would devote myself to it (quite apart from the fact that my technique and physical ability were, of course, nothing remarkable). But as I have written before, whether something is true and whether you can believe in it enough to act are independent propositions.

When the goal changes, the way you are coached changes with it (along with the curriculum and the training plan).
I no longer remember whether I ever said outright to my coach or assistant coach that I was working on the assumption that I was going pro, but I practiced in exactly that spirit, without the slightest doubt, and I did make this much clear: that I was taking it so seriously that I wanted to be taught with nothing held back, and that no matter how minor the point or how long it might take to fix, I wanted everything pointed out to me the second they noticed it.

I think that fierce, white-hot attitude helped make up for no small number of my shortcomings, and whatever the outcome may have been, I am glad that I was able to throw myself into training wholeheartedly, alongside my coaching team and the people I practiced with, all of whom I respect deeply.

There was the kind senior who generously taught me the finer points of spin technique; there was the senior who always managed to land, just a little ahead of me, the tricks I myself wanted to master; there was the senior whose own stoic devotion to practice spurred me on. Such people were among the companions I respected, people who did not scoff when I told them I was doing it with the intention of becoming good enough to go pro.

If I may hope, let the heat I burned there remain behind on the studio floor and in the air, like something I left behind, and somehow find its way back to repay at least a little of the debt I owe.

And may this blog too be of some use, perhaps to people I once knew, and perhaps someday to future aerialists who have not even begun yet, if only in passing.