You hear it all the time, when you get knocked down you have to get right back up and keep moving on. I didn’t really see this as a motto to live by until I came to college. In high school, your life is designed to succeed. You live in a pretty well sheltered environment in which your parents are there to structure your life for the best. When you move off to college you learn quickly that independence and responsibility are very serious qualities you have to develop quickly. On top of that you have many people will go from an environment where they excelled in high school and were the best, then get to college and find its nothing alike and start to struggle. This is where the idea of learning from failures and getting back up comes into play. I’m going to give a couple of examples of things that happened to me this semester and how I bounced back from them, in a hope that if anyone comes into the same situation they can see it can always get better.

This semester I rushed a fraternity on campus, I had this idea from what current brothers had said, that I essentially had a “bid” in the bag. I went every day to rush events and had a great interview at the end; I thought for sure I was in. The day came and I found out that I actually had not got a bid, for a few different reasons. I came to a surprise to me and my friends, it was a very unexpected. Not a week later I found out about an opportunity to bring one of the largest fraternities in the U.S to our campus. I am now on track to be one of the founding fathers and looking to run for a leadership position. Although the first fraternity knocked me down I didn’t let it put me off Greek Life, this can go for everyone, just because you didn’t get a bid in one fraternity doesn’t mean you won’t find your home in another one.

This year I applied for a job near school, I made it through the test phase and received an interview. I had spent hours studying for their test and dressed to impress come interview day. The interview went well and I was part of a small pool of applicants, I thought I had a very good chance of getting a position. Two weeks later I found out I hadn’t got the job via email. This was the first time I had actually been rejected from a job and it was pretty tough for me, you get left asking questions like, what happened? Did I say something wrong? Was I not qualified enough? I took a break from the job search for a while until I realized that I wasn’t going to let this bump in the road stop my plans. I started applying for jobs again and with weeks I had an interview for a position on campus, which eventually lead to me getting a job. I learnt from this that these knocks might get you down, but you have to realize there is plenty more opportunities out there you just have to find them.

I have always been a big kid, but over the last year I have gotten much bigger than I ever wanted to be. I started to let it take over my life, my laziness was out of control. I never went to the gym, and even when I did cardio was severely neglected. It started to affect my ability to be in good enough shape to play rugby. I realized that my life needed to change, so when I got back from winter break I forced myself to go to the gym and just do cardio. I started with short amounts and set goals for myself each week. This allowed me to push myself constantly, and we are now half way through the semester and I feel 100% better. My life is much more happy and full of energy. I set my goals based upon my clothes and how I look not strictly weight. This is because of two reasons, my lack of accessibility to a scale, but also because I do weight training, and can feel myself getting stronger. The scale wont reflect my progress accurately, and I don’t want to lose motivation because the scale says I only lost 5lbs when really I lost more fat than that. You have to find that inner motivation to push yourself to get out of the cycle of complacency and laziness. You need to create and stick to plans and goal, find the inner strength to grow and develop both psychologically and physically. When you don’t hit goals, you must keep pushing till you get there, not stay down and give up.

When you hit a speed bump in your journey through life, it might slow you down and cause you issues, but you have to push through it and keep going. Push till you hit the place in your life you want to be. Don’t give up when times get hard, because there is always a silver lining on the other side of the dark times.