One of the greatest pearls of wisdom a teacher has ever left me with was the quote “The lazy man works twice as hard.” Obviously, my sophomore English teacher, Mrs. Eastham, didn’t create it off the top of her head at the time. It is one of the most common quotes spoken by the “old-timers” but this was the first time I heard it and it is one of the many quotes/core values I try to live my life by. For those who don’t understand the quote, it essentially means that when one does a half-a** job, they will have to redo that job to do it right thus working “twice as hard.”

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This quote came up in conversation this past week while I was in the gym with a teammate. We showed up at the same time to lift together and he started to lift right away without stretching. I gave him a hard time for this and he responded, “I don’t need to stretch.” I then hit him with my insightful quote and he asked me to explain it. If Mr. Too Good For Stretching wouldn’t have stretched he would have put himself at a higher risk for injury and possibly hurt something, leading to pain and rehab time before he could lift again (working twice as hard).

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I thought about this quote from a literary sense. Everyone has their own styles of drafting but I feel it makes more sense to work hard on the first draft rather than to BS it just to reach a certain word count or page number by a deadline. Therefore, when it comes time to revise, simple edits can be made rather than completely rewriting the paper because one did a poor job the first time. Or if one decides to turn it in poor and not rewrite the paper how he/she should then they will receive a bad grade and possibly have to ask the professor if they can rewrite it anyway. Being lazy is never more efficient!