Happy New Year!
To take a breather from a hectic schedule teaching a concentrated course at Tel Aviv University, and to celebrate the completion of my book manuscript Behind Ancient Bars, finishing my GTU degree, and the beginning of my rabbinical studies at Hebrew Union College, I stayed at my beautiful aiirBnB this morning to watch the 2023 film Gran Turismo. I was surprised by how moving and thought provoking I found the film, given that I know absolutely nothing about formula racing and have no talent or taste for fast stuff (even in my open water racing days, it was always about endurance rather than speed). The film’s cinematography is breathtaking, using different kinds of drones and real race cars driven by real race drivers to bring one right into the heart of the action. But the film’s message has something important and valuable to say about the acquisition of skill, the question of proficiency/literacy in a new field, and the extent to which simulation practice translates to real-world competence.
The plot of Gran Turismo loosely adapts the astonishing true story of Jann Mardenborough, an adolescent aficionado of the eponymous racing game. Surrounded by people who undervalue his choice to spend much of his leisure time playing the game at home, Jann is astonished to receive a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to GT Academy, a marketing collaboration between Nissan and Playstation that offers the strongest gamers worldwide the opportunity to turn into real-life racecar drivers. It’s an attractive scheme, which at first seems like a fool’s errand–a shortcut into an expensive elite sport; the conventional path for the world’s fastest involves many miles behind the wheel, as well as obscene expenditures. Unsurprisingly, folks who took the long and expensive way in resent the SIM drivers, who are perceived as having taken shortcuts into the racing world. But Jann and his fellow gamers do not see it that way: they logged tens of thousands of hours at their consoles, at home and at gaming cafés, and they know how to race–at least in theory.
What they find out on the track surprises them. Driving an actual car calls for a high level of athletic fitness, the ability to endure g-forces that rival (and sometimes exceed) flying airplanes, and the clarity to strategize and commit to laser-fast action under extreme pressure and high temperatures. Not everyone who excels in gaming also makes it in the real machine, but Jann and a few others make it into the professional racing circuit. After a few real-life races, Jann qualifies for his FIA license, continuing his career for the Nissan team and accomplishing unbelievable feats, including podium finishes in some of the most challenging race courses worldwide.
The movie does not shy from the sobering reality that the feel-good story in which the underdogs overcome adversities and exceed expectations is also a story of having one’s accomplishments digested into a slick marketing campaign in the context of an absurdly expensive sport. But even within this context, it raises thorny questions about the acquisition of expertise. Having now sat through numerous academic appointment cycles, I see again and again how people tend to value their own path and undervalue, or misunderstand, other people’s accomplishments; being a foreigner with a nonstandard education on the US market was an exercise in excelling and overperforming to overcome doubt and unfamiliarity, and having been in this business for 25 years I can empathize with aspiring professionals who try to figure out how to make their own paths and accomplishments translatable to other environments. I wish I could propose a screening of this film at all first meetings of appointments committees around the world to encourage people to have an open mind and develop a better sense of smell for excellence–we are all prone to doubt when confronted with a set of unfamiliar skills. I also appreciated that, despite the film’s subtle notice of issues of race and class–an important comment in the context of an elite, inaccessible sport–the focus was on objective, measurable excellence. Say what you will, and with a great degree of truth, that in car racing money and resources translate to speed–ultimately, whoever is fastest wins the race.
The main source of doubt throughout the film surrounds the path to competence. At an NBC interview, Mardenborough said: “There’s a saying — you do 10,000 miles of anything, you become an expert. . . Racing drivers, their traditional route, their 10,000 miles, is done in karting. My 10,000 miles was done on ‘Gran Turismo’ and racing games.”
I first encountered the 10,000-hour idea in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, a gift from a former student, and even though this turns out to be considerably lowballed, especially for classical musicians, the notion that extensive hours over a long period of time separate the wheat from the chaff makes a lot of sense to me. I read with great interest Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit and Geoff Colvin’s Talent Is Overrated, and both made me think that approaching the task of training/practicing wisely and consistently with gusto and grit matter a lot more than natural gift. I see in my son, who has a marvelous raw talent for sports and athletics, that springing those talents into the world only takes one so far; the idea that he has to put in a lot of elbow grease to get good at something is anathema to him and, from what I hear from fellow parents, for many other kids. It’s hard to sell a child on the idea that anything worth doing well requires, not to put too fine a point on it, sucking at it for a very long time. It’s also hard to explain the jagged path to success and acclaim which, from my experience in swimming, weightlifting, singing, and playing several instruments, involves long and frustrating periods of plateau even after you get good enough to actually enjoy your skill, which you can only break out of by switching up your practice game. Once I called the Rich Roll Podcast, asking Rich, an extremely accomplished ultra-triathlete, how to break into multisport from endurance swimming when most triathletes come from cycling/running backgrounds. His advice was remarkably in tune with the message of Tharp and Colvin: “If you’re an endurance swimmer,” he said, “you already know how to suffer. . . learning how to cycle is just spending a lot of time on the saddle.” That Rich’s advice didn’t take for me, and I did not ultimately become a competitive triathlete, is because I didn’t spend the requisite time and couldn’t find the tolerance for sucking at road bikes for long enough to stop sucking. But I did embrace, later in life, the idea of sucking at weightlifting, and here we are, deadlifting 160 lbs a year in at 50 years of age.
But back to Mardenborough, who took an unconventional path toward that success: his proverbial time in the saddle, as he explained, took place in a simulation, not in an actual car. This makes me wonder a lot about activities we foster in law school, such as mock trials, and the simulations I teach my own students. As part of my Criminal Procedure: The Adjudicative Process course, I conduct several exercises in which the students receive what looks like a real case and have to negotiate a plea bargain, pick a jury, or even use the Federal Sentencing Guidelines to calculate someone’s sentence. While these things can foster legal skills that are greatly relevant to the practice of law, they are insufficient preparation for the real world, and the best our students can do, I think, is to spend as much time as they can doing clinical work. This stuff was almost unheard of when I was a law student in the mid-1990s, and I’m glad we have such terrific offerings at law schools. Negotiating a plea based on paper has much lower stakes (a grade) than the responsibility of holding the fate of another person in your hands, and gradually imparting the gravitas of this responsibility is something we must do a lot of, and already do, in legal education.
It also made me think a lot about starting at HUC’s inaugural Virtual Pathway cohort. I’m very happy that our curriculum involves a lot of hands-on work as student-rabbis in actual congregations, and I hope my placement proves to be a great spot. In some ways, I feel I’ve already been thrown into the deep end–the first Jewish ritual I officiated solo was my beloved father’s funeral. After that, co-officiating a Shabbat ritual with Rabbi Copeland at Sha’ar Zahav was an undertaking, but a joyous one, and I felt very supported. I can tell, though, that even though I like, and have facility with, liturgy, ritual, music, and putting together content, time in the saddle is going to be of vast importance for success at this new vocation over time, and I am very eager to start putting in the first of my proverbial 10,000 hours doing it.
If one of your New Year Resolutions is getting better at a skill or a vocation, I really recommend watching Gran Turismo and giving your own path and strategy serious thought. It’s a short life, but digging deep, rewarding wells is a worthwhile way to spend it.
No comment yet, add your voice below!