Can You Create a Perfect Pot?

I am not sure if I have mentioned it before, but my brother, Tommy, also writes a blog, except he writes for it almost every day of the week. While I complain about writing one blog a week, he churns out seven. I often forget to read it because there are so many blogs posted to his website, but my mom told me to read his most recent one. In the blog he wrote a few days ago, Tommy wrote about a video posted by the Vlog Brothers on YouTube, called “The Parable of the Perfect Pot”. Before reading it, I decided to watch the video and read the story behind it first so I could create my own opinion about it.

To give background on the story, at the beginning of the semester, a ceramics teacher split her class into two groups. The first group was given the task to make one perfect pot by the end of the semester, while the other group could make as many pots possible and pick the best one. When they would come to class, the group able to make many began creating pots from scratch. Meanwhile, the other group began researching different ways to make a pot and attempting to decide which was the best way. By the end of the semester, the teacher evaluated each of the groups pots and graded them based on how well they completed the task. The ironic thing was the group who made numerous pots produced the highest quality work and the group who just focused on one had little to show. While the second group was producing one pot the entire time, the first group was learning from their mistakes and tweaking the pots as they went.  

This story resonated with me because I show character traits that represent the perfect pot group. I tend to struggle with anything less than perfect the first time I do it and feel unmotivated to continue to do work if it is not up to standard. With my second year of college in full swing, I have been learning throughout this semester that perfect should not be the goal, especially in public relations. Nothing I do will ever be perfect the first time; for example, the videos I created for my sorority’s recruitment. I spent many hours making and remaking the two videos, deleting footage and replacing it with what I thought was better. If I had submitted the first draft of my videos, I know I would not be content watching them during recruitment. The same idea has carried over to my work in public relations.

I was terrified freshman year because I felt as though I wasn’t doing anything right and struggling to understand concepts. I wrote many papers that were below par, but still had to continue to write without feeling any improvement. But in reality, I was bettering myself as a writer every time I submitted a paper that maybe didn’t do so well. If I had given up after my first few failures, I wouldn’t have gotten my first article in a newspaper this past week! This idea has been hard for me to wrap my head around because I tend to be stubborn, but learning this pot analogy has helped me understand the purpose of failure.

I think the best part of stories like this is nobody has the same exact opinion on what the story means. It can be adjusted for any type of person, depending on varying personality traits, which is the case for my brother and me. As expected, when we watched the video, different thoughts ran through our heads as to what it meant to us. That doesn’t mean either of us are wrong, we are simply moved by different motivations and although the story both resonated with us, they were in different ways.

The more I have failed, especially thanks to Aggie classes, the more I have learned about myself as a writer and a person overall. Life isn’t about creating the perfect pot; it is about creating as many pots as you can and finally getting a product you are happy with in the end. I am nowhere near creating or BEING the perfect pot, but that truly is the beauty of life.

If you are interested in watching the video and learning more about the story, you can watch it here, and if you would like to read by brother’s blog, you can read it here.