Redefining Effort: What Do We Grind for?

My fingers ached. My wrists burned. I couldn’t stop. I’d been at the piano for hours, repeating the same arpeggios, climbing scales, running passages I feared I would choke on. The keys were slick with sweat, the ivory warm under my pulsing fingertips. Each note echoed in my living room, daring me to keep going. The pedal groaned under my heel. The bench creaked as I shifted for each passage. I wasn’t just practicing; I was grinding. 

My shoulders tightened with every repetition; my jaw clenched for the entire passage, releasing only when I made it through. And still, I went on. In my mind, the hours were nothing compared to the hope they held, the hope for a flawless performance and recognition. I thought the grind would be enough. 

High school feels no different. I’ve pressed my eraser into Calculus packets so hard it tore holes in the paper. I’ve stared into the glow of my computer reviewing every AP Chemistry mock exam since 2010. I’ve hunched over AP English argument prompts until the words blurred, eraser shavings littered over my desk. I’ve drilled through countless notes late at night, eyes stinging from the blurry blue light of my iPad. Every session at my desk carried the same desperate hope, the hope that my effort would be redeemed in a grade.

Even so, inevitably, I sometimes fell short of that hope. I didn’t get the score or award I’d worked for. When that happened, I felt as if all those hours of effort had been erased. The grind seemed to only count as a positive when I had something to show for it. I prioritized results over why I grinded. What I never realized was that scores weren’t the true destination of the grind. They were just byproducts, small reflections of the effort and growth that’d already taken place long before I stepped on stage or flipped over a test.

At the piano, I was grinding to be better. But by defining better as medals and flawlessness, I never gave myself credit for actually improving. At the competition I grinded for, I sat down at the piano bench, certain my hard work earned me a perfect performance. For the first few measures, it felt like I was floating. The notes spilled out effortlessly; the music carried me. But, halfway through, one jarring, cracked note sent the rest of the piece, and me, spiraling. My heart sank when I didn’t win. No medal. I wasn’t better. The grind seemed to vanish. 

But later that night, rewatching my old practice videos, I realized the scales that had once tripped me came easier. On stage, I flowed in the music without hesitation, my hand moving with a confidence I never noticed. The improvement came from the process, from the hours when it felt like I was working and hoping towards getting better. But really, I was already there.

At school, I was grinding for the perfect grade, proof of my learning. For a while, it felt like the knowledge flowing through me after every study session could get me there. But every disappointing score or mistake smothered the progress I seemed to make. No grade. I wasn’t better. The cycle repeated, grind after grind, each rhythm broken by a new mistake until I became burnt out. I couldn’t keep up with my hopes. 

I realized I chased recognition for so long because the grades I got could never fully fulfill my impossible expectations. Slowing down, I finally started to see every Calculus problem that could be solved more quickly, every chemistry interaction I could explain more in depth, every argument I could articulate better. I attached so much hope to academic validation, I couldn’t see the improvement already there.

Rewarding the score instead, we rarely pause to notice the grind itself. It’s easy to measure each other by numbers before we even ask about the process that produced them; so, of course grinding becomes tied to hoping for that result instead of valuing the work itself. We forget the real measure is what’s already grown inside of us through the process. We’re too busy waiting for recognition to realize we’ve already earned what we were chasing.

We should grind with patience instead of desperation, with hope not for recognition but for the quiet growth: a smoother passage, a clearer voice. Because hope in work is never foolish when it falls short; it’s only misplaced when it relies on outcomes we can’t control. The kind of hope worth grinding with is the one rooted in the process itself, the kind that can’t be cracked by losing a medal or a silly mistake. The sweat on my palms, the sting in my eyes, the endless hours bent over books were never just a means to an end. They were part of the end.