I think Josh touches upon a common trend among students that runs deep into their pre-college “shaping”. That a student becomes flustered and angry with assignments to the point of storming off and rejecting the teacher (much like Daniel was about to do before Miagi stopped him) demonstrates an assumption in the student that the professor’s method ought to conform to a certain standard (or maybe that education as a whole ought to have immediate rewards).

Much like in terms of stone, at the beginning of the process of carving, cuts, breaks and fractures are far more extreme than later stages of refining, smoothing and polishing. For the student, maybe this entails beginning with an education in education, to lay a solid foundation, though this process might entail a violent break with previous expectations.

For Daniel, his assumptions are shattered when Miagi demonstrates that his skills have serious application. It is unfortunate that Miagi has to earn Daniel’s respect in this way, but it was the way Daniel had to be shaped given his starting point. When shaping stone, “We will often take a suggestion from it, and our work will be the better for it” speaks to just this, I think.

To (hopefully) offer something encouraging to you Josh, your fears need not be final (in terms of the student’s process of formation). As a professor is in some ways a temporary artisan of his or her subjects, he or she contributes to the shaping process of individuals, though not necessarily to the point of completion.

Professors receive students in a certain condition and leave them unfinished, to continue their process elsewhere. You need not evaluate your own role as a professor in terms of completing the shaping process, but only in contributing to it in some positive way (being willing to step down from the place of artisan to become the contextually-appropriate tool for the Most High Artisan so that when the student leaves your care, he or she is closer to what God wants them to be than they were prior to your meeting).