Getting It Right by Accident
by Vinh Pham
We came to paint six new classrooms and build a playground. I want to tell you three small stories that happened because I think they're bigger than they look.
The first is about potential.
Hóa is in fifth grade. I told him one dollar is about 25,000 đồng. Then he asked me, "What's the smallest US coin?"
"A penny," I said, "one one-hundredth of a dollar."
He thought for a second. "So a penny is 0.25 ngàn đồng."
"That's right," I said, "but nobody says it that way. What would they say?"
He paused. "250 đồng."
Later, in a workshop, someone asked which of two interlocking gears spins faster, the big one or the small one. Hóa's hand shot up.
"The small one."
Then it shot up again before I could even form the reason myself.
"Because it has fewer teeth."
He did it all in his head. He never wrote anything down.
I keep wondering how many other Hóas are sitting in that school. The potential is already there. What we built this week is just the room to hold it.
The second is about growth.
By five o'clock, we'd get back to the hotel, hot and tired, with about ninety minutes before dinner. Most of us went straight for the pool.
Lộc, a scholarship student from Đà Nẵng, told me he couldn't swim and wanted to learn. So I lent him my goggles and taught him to breathe. Within an hour, he could swim. I told him to keep the goggles and practice.
While Dr. Tom and I were teaching Lộc, Thăng walked over and said he wanted to learn too.
That's the thing I'll carry home. These young people are not waiting to be ready. They just want to get better, right now, right here.
The third is about imperfection.
My team painted the STEAM room, with five light bulbs on the ceiling and one letter in each: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. Sophia is the tallest, so she painted the cords. On one cord, her brush slipped and left a little mark. She said she'd fix it. I told her to leave it.
Years from now, a student will look up at those bulbs and notice that stray mark and wonder: was she distracted, or did she mean it? It almost looks like a light switch built into the cord. We got something right by accident.
It kept happening.
The "E" and the "M" looked misaligned. The M sat too low, and we thought we'd failed. Then we checked Sara’s original design. The M was supposed to be lower.
Barry's team built two climbing walls, and one came out steeper than the other. It turns out climbers want different levels of difficulty. Right again, by accident.
Here's what I take from that: we are all amateurs here. None of us are professional painters or builders. But we did the work instead of waiting for someone more qualified. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
So that's what this week taught me.
Notice the potential already in front of you.
Growth. Keep wanting to learn.
Do the work, even imperfectly.
Sometimes you get it exactly right by accident, but only if you're willing to pick up the brush.
