We’ve all felt it: the anxiety, the anger and the sadness that follows submitting an assignment. In many ways, it’s a release to let go of a paper, a quiz, a test or a group project but then the waiting game begins. You wonder, unless you are a very specific type of person, how you did, if you fulfilled the expectations of your professor and how this will affect your final score in the class. Even the people who usually have no need to worry, students who get started far in advance and consult every professor to get a complete understanding of the work, will meet with a subject so far out of their background or a task so far out of their talents that a little trill of horror will jitter deep inside.
Sometimes you understand that you will outright fail. You will be late with a strict professor and
realize that you are coming to a slaughter as the sacrificial lamb. Sometimes you will have every intention of studying and will not. You walk into the test remembering incidental bits of knowledge and nothing too concrete. Life will suck.
This is not to say that many of you are not on the ball or even that hard feelings over schoolwork are natural. However, they do happen. The truth is that we like to complain; we like to commiserate. Nothing builds camaraderie like showing other people we are vulnerable and fed up too. At a certain level, we may be angry but we realize, almost as an instinct, that life goes on. We may be filled with foreboding or sadness but we know that the thing to do is isolate the problem, get it out of our heads and replace it with the sentiment of good company.
However, it’s good to call a spade a spade: to focus in on the problem and talk about it. I’ve been scared by assignments. I’ve been gutted of all of my hope and left with an immortal slouch.Many times, I’ve been able to recover and being a senior, I’m often immune to the horrors and hassles of class work. I have little shame left due to one long make- out session after the other with imperfection.
This doesn’t mean I don’t care. It doesn’t mean I think nothing of the bonds of respect and responsibility I have with my class work. I simply know, sadly, that I’ve broken trust; I’ve not given everything the time it needs. At times, I’ve lost the patience and consideration of those around me and I know how that hurts.
What makes it all better, a bandage more than corrective surgery, is the growing feeling that life is
a war of attrition. The task may not be done well. The class may not end in some pristine condition. Failure may happen and you are forever liable to get fired from the job. However, no matter how lame it seems, the effort is what counts, the wish to confront not only that class but that day, not only that day but that week.
Many times, it’s about portioning out effort and sometimes, its about giving up. Out of several tasks, what deserves your time the most. Even though it
hurts, what is a lost cause? Many of us grow up with the expectation that we can do everything that is asked of us, that we can be the perfect, responsive worker or cooperator. We think we can save other people grief and not be “that guy.”
However, you will one day, even if it is only in a small way, be that guy or that girl. Everything will not be able to be done perfectly but adequately. Sometimes, due to mistakes of your making and of others, the ball will drop and you have to either pick it or let it go based on the importance of the matter. It’s a balancing game, one we don’t always get and because we don’t, we have things like the subject of this article. We have human error.
Of course you can put in extra time at that gym, start that big paper due in three weeks and have a dinner with people you like. However, we are often too long at the gym, too slow to start the paper and skipping out on dinner. Plans change, sometimes for the best reasons, sometimes, and I admit this to anyone, because we are being slouches.
I suppose the moral of this cautionary tale is to accept what you cannot change, change what you can and be kind to yourself when, honestly, no one else is in a position.
