Your first draft is not your best work

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? I was always a pretty good student and my favorite subject was English, partly because I loved reading and partly because I was good enough that I never had to put any effort into the class.

[00:00:31] But there are a few sort of big defining moments in my academic life that changed my approach to writing for the better. And I wanna share one of those with you today. My grade nine English teacher was a published author who wrote a lot of short stories. And so the way she designed the class – it was pretty heavy on writing, and of course, I wrote every assignment like I always did: at the last minute.

[00:00:59] After having let the ideas percolate simply in my mind. I could dash off the entire essay in an hour or so the night before and submit it, and I always got an A. Then one day she decided to make us write the essay in stages in class over the course of five separate classes. I think she did it so she could observe and help out the students who were struggling, and I'm sure she did help them, but somehow she also ended up honing in on me.

[00:01:30] You see, for four of those classes, I handed in some random jotte notes for my "progress", and then on Friday, which was the fifth class, I sat down, wrote the whole essay, and handed it in. She gave me a C minus on that assignment. I had never gotten even a B minus, let alone a C minus in my life before.

[00:01:56] And I was horrified. I asked her what was so bad about it, and she told me, "That wasn't your best work, Aurooba. It wasn't even close to your best work." And we argued, oh, did we argue I didn't think it was fair for her to give me a C. Even if she thought she should, because if she thought the essay was good, she should give me an A, but she's stuck to her guns.

[00:02:23] I would enter her class and every time she would go, "revise Aurooba, revise," she even got my parents' support. It was infuriating. From that day on, she forced me to revise everything I did. I would watch my peers not revise at all and get by, while I would be made to revise my work two or three or four times. I really liked my teacher, but I also really resented my teacher and it was a very frustrating time for me. Until one day I looked at my first draft and then I looked at draft number four.

[00:02:59] The first draft was good. There was a reason I used to get A's, but that fourth draft? That fourth draft was just something else. It was more refined, more thoughtful, and so much more creative than that first draft. I hated being forced to revise. I hated that I had to PROVED I had revised; until that day when I realized that revision was a real thing.

[00:03:24] My fourth draft was shorter. The paragraphs were tighter. The thesis was razor sharp, and the conclusion, well, even I was impressed by it and I was the person who wrote it. I also promptly went out and bought my teacher a box of dozen donuts. Because all she was doing was being exactly the kind of teacher I needed, and all I had done was grumble and make her life harder for nearly four months.

[00:03:49] And I've been pretty lucky in my academic life. I've had some amazing teachers who cared about me deeply and pushed me to grow and demanded better from me in the most loving way possible. And really the only way I know how to pay them back is by paying it forward, which is maybe why I like to teach and want to teach.

[00:04:08] But I mean, that's a bit of a tangent. This podcast is often first draft work – intentionally so. But I guess the point of today's episode is that when you're creating something bigger, something more important, something for a larger audience, leave room for revision. Because that first draft will never be your best work, no matter how smart you are.

[00:04:38] The best work? Well, that comes with iteration. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.