Presentation
When I was in elementary school, I had a teacher who taught me a pretty important lesson that I still think about to this day. I should note that elementary school in the region of BC where I grew up went until Grade 5, and not Grade 7 or 8 like most schools in Vancouver – I wasn’t as annoying as I am going to describe myself when I was in higher grades (but I was pretty close). Anyway, book reports were a big thing back then, and Mrs. Chitrenky would insist that each book report would be handed in with a cover that was a hand-drawn illustration of either:
- What we felt was a major theme of a book.
- Our favourite part of a book.
Being the impatient kid I was, drawing the cover was the most annoying thing in the world that my teacher could possibly ask me to do. This is probably why the first couple book reports I handed in had covers that basically amounted of some hastily-drawn stick figures in a somewhat comprehensible configuration.
At that time, I couldn’t understand why I had to go waste my time drawing a cover when I had already spent so much of it writing up the report. In my opinion, the work would “speak for itself,” or so the saying goes.
And I wasn’t wrong, to a point. I was never a whiz at math, but the highest grades on my elementary school report cards was often English or “Reading Comprehension,” as I think it was called back then. But every one of my book reports would come back with a rather sizeable portion of marks taken off for “presentation.” It eventually began to bother me so much that I decided to go and make the most beautiful illustrations, some of which were displayed in major art galleries around the world.
That’s obviously a flat-out lie, as my elementary school self was so devoid of self-reflection that I could not possibly believe that I was getting marks off for such a puny thing like presentation. So went to Mrs. Chitrenky and asked why I was getting docked points. I don’t remember the exact words she used, but she said something along the lines of “it doesn’t matter how good your work is, if it looks horrible on the surface.” Of course she didn’t say it like that, but you get the idea.
A switch must have flipped in my brain that day, because her explanation made total sense. I did begin to pay a little more attention not just to the covers I had to draw for book covers, but to other things as well. My penmanship was incredibly poor back then (even for elementary school standards), but I began to make a conscious effort to improve it.
I never became an English major, nor did I write any book reports in high school or university. But the tenet of presentation being the thing that colours how people think of most things has pretty much permeated most of the work I do. When I write code, I’m often not satisfied until I feel that it looks good, and I often pore over the format of slides I use to present. Ultimately, I think that we’re here for a limited amount of time. Although the things we produce in our lifetimes will inevitably be forgotten and lost to time, I don’t want to use the time I have to create something that I would consider “subpar.” Call it hubris, but I’m really tired of drawing stick figures for everything.