One of the things that brings New York City restaurateur Danny Meyer the most pleasure is this: “seeing a waiter lifting a wineglass off the table, holding it up to the light, and checking for smudges,” despite the waiter’s awareness that it is highly unlikely that the average guest will notice the stains.
“It’s not hard to teach anyone the proper way to set a beautiful table,” Meyer elaborates in his memoirs. What is almost impossible to teach is “how to care deeply about setting the table beautifully,” an impulse that, after decades of hiring and firing, Meyer sees, as “rooted in instinct and upbringing, and then constantly honed through awareness, caring, and practice.”
This inner compulsion to do excel even in small things was already a personality trait in Nvidia founder Jensen Huang when he worked at Denny’s as a 15 year-old, an experience that, according to his biographer Tae Kim, “taught him to find satisfaction in the quality of his work, no matter how minor the task,” whether it was cleaning toilets or carrying more cups than his colleagues. But it was only in hindsight did Huang come to understand the true impact his stint at the fast food chain had on him: “as (Huang) sees it, the biggest single factor that propelled him from scrubbing toilets to managing entire divisions of a microchip company was his willingness, and ability, to put in more effort, and tolerate more suffering, than anyone else.”
A few days ago, the parent of a student told me his child was unhappy with the grade she got for her English. Under my wing, she had already made strides, and she thought she had done well at the test, yet she wasn’t among the handful of students who secured top ranking.
I saw this incident as very positive, for I wasn’t aware that my student was this hungry for success and recognition. I then spent a full hour dissecting the introductory paragraphs of her exam script, putting its flaws under a magnifying glass, as a way to add fuel to the fire that was her urge to care about her work. Good grades come and go, but this hunger to excel, once it becomes part of a young person’s character, is life-long and can see him or her through tough times in the years and decades ahead.
I started tutoring thinking my job was to transform students into better thinkers through developing them into better writers. I have now come to realize – thanks to Meyer’s enlightenment and Jensen Huang’s example – that I’m also here to provide them with the handholding they need as they suffer through the process of transforming themselves from merely good to outstanding.
Michelle Ng
英國牛津大學畢業，前《蘋果日報》和《眾新聞》專欄作家，現在身在楓葉國，心繫中國大陸和香港。
聯絡方式： michelleng.coach@proton.me
個人網站： https://michellengwritings.com
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