This said, it was now obvious that the real value in their experience working on this production was going to be learning that it was not as easy as it had initially looked. Teachers who have a great deal of experience, and who innately use shortcuts they have learned over the years, sometimes do not realize that they are failing to impart that information to their students. I myself realized that I was guilty of that behavior. The result of this is the appearance that the process is much easier than you make it out to be in class. In teaching the skills involved in technical areas, this is often overlooked.
Productions are a merciless master with unyielding deadlines.
Because of that fact, we tend to employ every shortcut we know to facilitate a production getting up on time. However, this can create confusion for our students because it seems to be contrary to the theories and practices we expound in the classroom. Therefore, when the student is faced with actually applying those classroom lessons to their own design or technical work, there is a natural assumption that it won't be that difficult. But reality soon sets in, and as the student becomes involved in the production, they slowly begin to understand the complexity of the actual work process. This realization usually comes too late and at the point they are able to understand that they don't really understand much of what they are doing.