Dennis

It felt personal. I asked him for help, did everything he told me I needed to do, and he still gave me a B. 

Dennis was one of my professors in the print media program at my college. He taught visual design, or whatever it was called; we spent the semester doing graphics and layouts and, despite a somewhat-natural inclination toward such things (I had been a layout expert in high school and well-praised for it), I could never seem to figure out how to push over that invisible hump Dennis had laid out for the all-elusive A. 

So after repeated attempts to finagle things, to change a few things up here and there, to work and re-work my designs, I finally did something that I had not had to do very often in my life, and I asked Dennis for help. I stayed after class, for long hours, working through my big project designs, just the two of us, tweaking and roughing and reworking them until he started to nod approval and tell me that yes, I was on the right track. 

Finally. 

And then, I stopped. 

I mean, I had the professor right next to me and he told me that yes, this was what he was looking for. These were the few little things I had been missing. Once I got those little nods of approval, I simply polished what I had, finished it off, slept on it, then printed it all off and turned it in. (Yes, in those days, we were still printing things off - even entire newspaper/magazine spreads.) I had done everything exactly the way he showed in his demos (which I didn't always agree with, style-wise, but he holds the gradebook) and further enhanced it exactly as he had shown me, and I felt good about it. 

And I got a B. 

I was angry about this for a long time. And, I thought, righteously so. There were places in the print media program where I was just treading water - through no fault of my own, but because I ran on the wrong side of the political line for the professors and they let me know it by dinging not the style, but the content, of every piece that I wrote. Design was supposed to be my safe haven, my saving grace, something purely objective at which I already knew I excelled. And I had asked for help. I had worked directly with Dennis to get everything just right for this one big project. So...a B? 

But the more I've grown up, the more I've lived my life, particularly the more I've lived my life as a helper, I realize that at least part of my frustration with this whole experience was the way that I help others. 

See, by nature, I am someone who, if I help you, I don't want to leave until it's done. And done right. And done perfectly. I will be there until it's over, and we will do it together (for a long season of my life, I would just do it for you so that, you know, it would most definitely be done right) until it's not just good, but great. Perfect. Excellent. 

So it's the fact that this is the way that I approached helping others that frustrated me about the way Dennis helped me. I followed his plan exactly, and it was "decent." It wasn't excellent. Who helps someone else and doesn't end up with something excellent? What kind of sadist is that? 

It's someone who wants to leave room for a little sparkle. 

It's someone who does the bare bones well, but leaves room for the flourish. Who helps, but in helping, creates space for the person who is actually in charge of things to add their own personal touch. Who gets the basics down, but wants to see the personality come through. Wants to see something creative that they maybe couldn't have thought of themselves...or perhaps sat right there next to you the whole time and longed for you to see with your own eyes. 

It's someone who doesn't want to just create a finished product, but help to foster a vision - a way of seeing that helps you see more than you previously were, that engages your imagination and encourages your risk and embraces your personality. 

Helping others is not always about the finished product; actually, it rarely is. Most often, it's about development of the person you're helping...not just so that they do good work, but so that they become a better version of themselves. A more full version of themselves and their abilities. 

If Dennis had never sat with me for hours, painstakingly going over things pica by pica by pica, only to give me a freakin' B, I don't know if I would have understood that as well. 

So thanks for the B.