This past Monday, Martin Luther King Day, marked the arrival of the third decade of my existence. I turned 20 years old and was overwhelmed by the thought that I'm getting old.
Well, in just 10 years from now, I’ll be 30 -- which is pretty darn close to 35, which might as well be 40, and after 40, I’m pretty much dead. So, while reflecting on this, and being that I am certainly on my way to the grave any day now, I thought I would compose a list in memoriam of what I feel are the most important lessons I have learned in the past two decades.
Do your homework.
Doing homework leads to the beginning of a wonderful cycle. Teachers like you more, you get better grades, better grades create bigger opportunities, big opportunities lead to great connections and great connections lead to hit singles.
Challenge authority.
There are right ways and wrong ways to do this. Through the seven year span of my life in a boarding school, I have dabbled in both the right and wrong ways of bringing attention to a few power issues that I felt needed to be addressed.
The wrong way of going about it is making a scene. In the moment, it certainly feels good to let everything you are thinking come out of your mouth, and your peers may even thank you for saying what’s been on their own minds as well, however, this could also potentially make matters worse. When it comes to authority figures, who were likely bullied youngest siblings, they dare not allow other people to make them look like a fool! Their faces turn red while you try your hardest to remain serious, and they make sure you never gain the upper hand. If they are a teacher, they’ll be sure to make the rest of the marking period hell for you.
The right way to go about issues relating to authority is privately. You’ll gain loads of respect from whom you’re presenting the problem too, and you can always brag to your friends about how you told your boss/teacher off and gain whole lot of respect from them as well! It’s a full-circle win-win situation.
Please and thank you.
Nobody owes you anything and everybody has the ability to be selfish. When receiving something, it’s important to give thanks. Who knows? Perhaps the people around you may mistake you for actually being pleasant and polite!
Today is special!
A singer sings. If you want to be a singer, sing. If you want to learn to ride a unicycle, good luck because I’ve already tried and they are all too expensive.
If you don’t ask, you don’t get it!
Coming to college right after graduating from a boarding school, I definitely made a fool, we signed in and out (yes, of our own homes) and had to know precisely when we were returning. There was no spur of the moment hanging out or knocking on a friend's door, when looking for crimes to commit and property to vandalize (because why else would student-aged children want to spend time with one another).
Anyway, after I was all unpacked and settled into my room, some other alumni from my high school wanted to explore the campus. The first thing we did was ask who to report to in order to let them know we are leaving the building, as well as ask what time we had to return. We got laughed at. Hard. But had we not asked, we probably would have a very lonely and miserable first day of our college experience.
Petting animals is great stress relief.
Love the people that nobody else does.
Think of all the great relationships you have in your life. Who do you speak to every day? Who do you speak to at least every week? Who do you spend a good majority of time thinking about? Now, imagine that these people are gone. Every single one of them turns their back on you without hesitation and continues to live a happy and fulfilling life. It’s hard to love somebody that most people, obviously, don’t. I find it very believable that these could be the people who need to experience love most. A smile through the halls of your school, a hello in the morning, the simplest things can be the most love a person has received in a while.
Drugs and alcohol are not as cool as you think.
Don’t do them. Sure you’ll make a lot of friends, but your insides will look like this.
I will not preach to my children that “Life is not fair.”
Well, duh, of course life isn’t fair. Every time a student receives a bad grade or loses privileges and complains about how unfair life is, they are often given the response, “Life is not fair.” Although, we generally accept this as true, the fact that I earned an unsatisfactory grade and am disappointed in myself is not why the world is unfair, nor is writing an article at 2:04 a.m. because I chose to procrastinate.
What’s really unfair is the fact that before I went to class this morning, I bundled up into three different coats because of how cold it was, while tomorrow I’ll be in the city handing out food for people who have been without a single coat all winter.
