Humble Learning

In writing and turf

Recently, I’ve been working on an article I’m hoping to submit to a journal for publication. Writing the article was a part of my overall re-commitment to writing and it has been a wonderful learning experience; even more so, because a writer friend has been kind enough to edit the piece for me. I like to think of myself as a good writer, but the experience of being edited by someone so accomplished has shown me how much I have to learn. The perspective offered has been humbling, and made me realize how little I really know. 

Anyone who grows grass for a living should be well acquainted with the feeling of being humbled. Fine turf is often grown in conditions not particularly conducive to doing so. Failure is certain to come at some point, humility is vital. A superintendent I worked for was fond of saying: “as soon as you think you have it figured out, you will get humbled.” It’s a statement that has proven to be true many times over.  

The summer of 2021 was going very well; the condition of the golf course was excellent and the members were happy. In early August, we performed an aerification process. It was a process I had used before, and I let the members know we would experience 10-14 days of healing. It didn’t work out that way. The process didn’t go as planned, and the healing was not complete in 10-14 days. In fact, by the time the greens were healed, I’d cost our members almost two months of the best golf Minnesota has to offer. It seemed I had it all figured out and then I was humbled. 

It would have been easy for me to double down on the process–it was one we’d used successfully many times before–I could have explained all the reasons we used it, the benefits it would bring down the road and how the great conditions we had experienced to that point in the summer were because of processes like this one. All of those things could have been true; would have been true, but they wouldn’t have changed the fact our golfers had lost two months of great golf. In this instance, having humility allowed me not to simply defend my position, but to take a hard look at the entire process. It became a learning experience.

When something doesn’t go the way we expect, it can be easy to want to defend our position, tell everyone all the reasons we were right for doing what we did. In the same vein, it is not easy to have someone tell us our writing needs work. Yet in such situations, a humble reaction allows us to learn. We might analyze and improve upon a previously successful approach, or buy a book on a subject we realize we are under-educated. Either way, humility leads to learning.