In the United States, endurance is a virtue valued above
all else. It’s a foundation of the American dream, the belief
that through determination anyone can achieve anything.
And while not a bad ideal by itself, somehow society has
also accepted that the opposite is true — that
quitting guarantees failure.


As high school students, we are often the most
susceptible to this way of thinking. We’ve all stuck
with things we hated for years simply because of
the faults associated with being a quitter.


However, quitting — especially in high
school — is sometimes the best course of action,
contrary to the sign of laziness or emotional weakness that
it’s stereotypically believed to be.


In order to improve in anything, one first has to accept
that the current state of things is not perfect — that it can be
improved upon. This principle seems so obvious in school
or sports. We go to school and learn because we know that
our current understanding of the world isn’t perfect. We
exercise because the current state of our body isn’t perfect.


Somehow, when it comes to deciding what we spend time
on, we don’t acknowledge imperfection or have any desire
to improve. This isn’t about trivial things like watching
movies or scrolling online — this is about the activities we
put effort and focus into, day after day. All too
often, we endure activities that we don’t enjoy or
don’t improve in simply out of habit.


In being more open to quitting things, we are
acknowledging that the way we spend our time
can be improved. In an article for The New York
Times, MIT professor Sendhil Mullainathan
wrote that “experimentation is an act of humility,
an acknowledgment that there is simply no way of knowing
without trying something different.”


Though the act of quitting is a risk, and therefore admittedly
scary, it’s usually the only way to experiment with figuring
out how to spend our time. And as high school students, it’s
ridiculous to think that we have it all figured out.


In addition to this fear comes the psychological
phenomenon known as the sunk-cost fallacy. The fallacy
(so called because it’s completely illogical)
describes an all too common action that
people take: continuing with something
pointless or unpleasant simply because of past
investment in the activity. Although
you shouldn’t give up after every little
hiccup, if something is consistently
unrewarding, perhaps it’s best to move
on and experiment with a different
activity.


Quitting shouldn’t immediately
be thought of negatively, or as a
sign of defeat. It’s not permanent.
Though it is a change, it can also
provide some distance and a
space for reflection. It allows us to
compare how we feel both with and
without a given activity in our life.
It’s never too late to try new things,
but it’s also never too late to quit.

The Tower

Franciszka Czerniak's Work

The Tower