David Goggins, ex-Navy SEAL, now ultra-athlete and motivational speaker, shared in a popular YouTube video (JRE #1212) something that I found incredibly motivating. His biggest fear, and I paraphrase here, is that he arrives at the gates of Heaven and sees God there with a clipboard, holding a list of many great accomplishments. Goggins’ fear is that he looks at this list and says to God, “But that’s not me. I didn’t do those things,” and the all-knowing God replies, “That’s correct. That’s who you could have been. This is a list of all those things you were capable of doing.”

What does Goggins have to do with thermodynamics and, more generally, the subject of education? Nothing and everything. While he has accomplished much in his life, I’m not sure he ever turned his eyes toward thermodynamics. But that’s not the point here. My point is the provocative question that rises from Goggins’ fear. How many students graduate from K-12, college, or grad school without having achieved what they are capable of? How many graduate with a significant gap between who they are and who they could have been? As I recently shared (video here), my short answer for the specific world of university-level thermodynamics is, “too many.” This is unacceptable.

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