Tuesday’s circle I asked everybody to write motivational letters to themselves about how to finish this year strong. Here are the best lines:

“Remember that Uncle Spanky promised $20 for each A plus mom will kill me if we quack up for our last quarter.” –TC
“By the end of the year, I’m going to have my first episode finished.” –IJ
“Stay focused.” –KM
“Remember that you have someone looking up to you so if you mess up they will think it’s okay for them to mess up.” –MT
“You gonna finish up the year strong because you want your grades to go up.” –AH
“I expect my project to come to life and end up being a big program, even afterschool”
“I want to show people that if I can speak up they can speak up also.” –DD
“Think of the final product you will have at the end of the year.” BC
“If you don’t finish this project you are going to fail in life.” MH
“You will complete this project because you will make this world a better place.” HG
“By the time you read this, I will be dead. But keep your head up and keep pushing through the work” VG

The way you do things matters as much as what you’re trying to do. From Martin Luther King:

One of the great philosophical debates of history has been over the whole question of means and ends. And there have always been those who argued that the end justifies the means, that the means really aren’t important. The important thing is to get to the end, you see.

So, if you’re seeking to develop a just society, they say, the important thing is to get there, and the means are really unimportant; any means will do so long as they get you there? they may be violent, they may be untruthful means; they may even be unjust means to a just end. There have been those who have argued this throughout history. But we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

–Martin Luther King, Christmas Sermon, 1967