This postI know it’s a little early for New Year’s resolutions, but I watched a movie called Homeless to Harvard with my family yesterday, and it changed my life. It’s a true story about a girl named Liz Murray, and here’s a synopsis from Wikipedia:
Murray was the child of poor, drug-addicted, HIV-infected parents. She became homeless at age 15 when her mother died and her father moved to a shelter. Her life turned around when she began attending the Humanities Preparatory School in Greenwich Village. Though she started high school at a late age and remained without a stable home, she was able to graduate in two years. She was awarded a New York Times scholarship for needy students and accepted into Harvard for the fall of 2000.
Back in my high school days, I cared about school, and I excelled because of it. Somewhere along the way, however, apathy took over. School didn’t seem to be as important as my other projects. My time was my precious, and so I began getting by with the bare minimum, sometimes not even that. Where I once cared about getting A’s in all my classes, I now was content with B’s (though anything lower than that still stung a little).
I regret it.
Watching Liz (well, the portrayal of her) study hard — really hard — brought back memories of the days when I knew I was doing my best, when I strove to excel. Sure, I got very good grades considering my apathy — sorry, I’m one of “those” kinds of people, I’m afraid — and it certainly was nice to make good progress on all my other projects. I pretty much convinced myself that my way was best.
I think I was wrong. Right now I wish I could go back and relive the last three years of college so I could really do my all. Wait, am I actually saying that? Okay, I don’t really wish I could go back, but I do wish I had more than a semester left in which to prove myself. It’s like getting to the last month of your life and realizing that you forgot who you were, everything you stood for, and hardly having enough time to make good. I suppose I have two years of grad school ahead, but still the feeling remains.
This isn’t just about school, though — it’s about excelling in everything you do. I’ve gotten lazy, really. Coasting through life has been my motto, when it really ought to have been discipline and hard work. I rationalized it to myself by joking with others, complaining to my fellow classmates, making up all sorts of excuses for why I shouldn’t care.
Should I?
I think so. Again, it’s not really about the grades or even school itself. It’s about character, about integrity, about holding yourself to a standard and becoming a better person because of it. (And no, I don’t think working hard at school is too extreme of a standard. :))
So, I resolve to work my tail off next semester, doing my level best to master the material and be an excellent student. Laziness will be miles from me. I’ll do whatever it takes — primarily managing my time better, but also staving off the dogs of apathy that stalk me day and night — and I will come off conqueror. And then this nagging feeling of guilt, which has been my shadow for these past few years, will finally disappear. There are few things as sweet as knowing you’ve done your best. Grades still won’t matter to me, of course, but I desperately need the peace of mind that will surely come when I exile this pathetic mediocrity and in its place raise up a banner of excellence.
