I once came across a proverb regarding life which stuck in my head more than the usual mix of sayings and advice one might encounter in his or her time. The proverb read ?Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.? I will always remember that saying not only for the fact that I have it written down for safe keeping, but also because I found it at the time I needed it most during my collegiate career. What appeared to be most dire situation during college turned out to probably be the most significant event during my college days. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact event which I consider to be the most significant, I can say for sure that it was the culmination of a collection events which I consider to be most significant to my development as a student. The culmination of events I am referring to is the time I pulled myself out from under a deluge of work with nothing more than my own self-motivation and a fear of failure.
I remember the weekend being especially cold fall during my first semester at college. I knew I had been procrastinating a little more excessively than I had in the past due to the fact that I had been enjoying the experience of having the freedom college provided. I knew that I had a few major papers due around the same time, but had neglected to realize that the time they were due was all in the same week. It had also skipped my mind that there would be the other usual homework in those classes as well. The weekend came and I had the usual teenager-at-college plans. I knew in the back of my mind that midterms had just passed and the due dates for my papers was fast approaching, but the amount of work I actually had to do didn?t hit me until I was walking...
I particularly remember the weather because when I realized what I had to do I stopped dead in my tracks, mouth agape, and just felt the cold air blow right through me. To this day I do not know if it was an actual gust of wind or just the chill of realizing the amount of pages I needed to type by this time next week was about triple the amount of years I had been alive. I do distinctly recall standing still in the night and a definite cold air running through me.
I am not sure how long I stood there motionless, but I do recall exactly what was going through my mind. My first thought was to go through with my plans for the evening and then just get to work on Saturday. I knew that it would be very easy for me to cancel my plans for Saturday and just work as hard as I could for as long as I could that Saturday and Sunday. If I was finished by Sunday night I would have a clean slate on Monday, as far as term papers were concerned, and that I would just have to find time during the week to complete the homework which was assigned each night. I could even come up with an excuse here or there to get an extension on some of the work I needed to do. One option I did not have was coming down with an ?illness? and gaining an extension by not attending class. My term papers were due and I did not want to get on my professors? bad sides by missing class on the designated due date for term papers. So that was it. I decided to go enjoy myself one last night before cracking down the upcoming weekend.
As I walked to my friend?s house that Friday night I could not get the massive task at hand out of my mind. I was budgeting my time in my…
