The Ikea furniture problem

One thing I’ve felt over the years doing projects with students is what I’ve been calling the “Ikea furniture problem.” I know the feeling all too well — the initial excitement of opening the box, of looking at the directions, of lining up the plastic bags from 1-4 — quickly fades as you put a piece on backwards, as you over-tighten a bolt, as a washer rolls under the pile of cardboard, as you realize that you’re on step ten of thirty-four.

This is normal. When Kima calls McNulty to complain about putting a crib together, there’s a reason he responds by asking what kind of scotch she’s using. (Definitely NSFW, start at 1:11)

This is project work. This is the frustration you’ll feel when you’re working your way through any process, whether it’s a short paper for a college class, a home renovation project, or recording a new song. If you’re not frustrated, there’s probably little at stake.

For students, though, there’s a different set of issues. It’s school, right? Whatever work you’ve done as a teacher to build the culture, there’s a still sense that it’s just school and when you get right down to it, who really cares. You may orient your projects outwards, you may have done as much as you can to ensure that it’s an authentic project, you may have slowly scaffolded the project so that, with work, the right work, they can do it well. Even with all that, you’re likely to run into difficulties as it just won’t matter. As a kid said to me yesterday, I can do it, I just don’t want to.

Two, this frustration is likely new to them. It’s thirty years ago but I remember the feeling of battling with calculus problems at night for my eleventh grade math class. Each problem would take 20-30 minutes and there was a sense of rage and impossibility behind it. Sometimes the problems would open up in the morning, other times not so much. I wish someone had talked through this frustration with me at the time said something like, “the sooner you develop strategies to deal with this situation, the better off you’ll be. “ For example, one thing I learned pretty quickly was that when people asked me what’s the matter, simply saying everything doesn’t work. Learning to say things like, “I’m uncomfortable because I don’t really know anyone and they all seem to know each other and they all know what to do” makes it that much easier. (To be clear, that’s not what I would have said, but it’s what I meant when I said things like “I hate all these people.”)

Not only is the frustration new to them, it’s also, given some of the school situations they’ve experienced, it’s unexpected. If you’ve spent your school years in rows, filling out worksheets and taking tests, receiving minimal feedback other than report cards that precede one’s promotion to the next grade, you’re unlikely to have an inner sense of how one overcomes the frustration any project will create. Instead, you’ll have an idea that when the day comes to an end, the work will be over, and the frustration can be avoided. (Some students have an inkling that something is wrong with this situation.) Crappy schools certainly produce crappy outcomes but knowing that there’s nothing at stake makes it even harder.

Getting to know this feeling, this lost at sea feeling, the “screw it, I’m quitting feeling”, is just another reason a full project based model offers something to education that’s missing too much of the time.