Humble Pie
“Your talents are God’s gift to you. What you do with those talents is your gift back to God.” - Benton’s Mom (ER)
Just got back from the MCC Awards Ceremony, which was a lot of fun and ended at a restaurant with a particularly good glass of wine. The ceremony itself was an eye-opener.
I do very well in school, considering I procrastinate my ass off and do everything slapdash. It always seems to work out. I have a near-photographic memory for facts, I’m not too humble to say my writing skills are top-notch. On top of that, I genuinely enjoy being in school. When I found out I’d won the English Department award at my college, I was sort of cracking up over it, because I basically felt like I’d always done the bare minimum to scrape by (even if scraping by for me is A’s). I’m forever burning the midnight oil, or writing a paper on a book I only barely paid attention to, waiting until the last minute. I’m a pressure-cooker student I guess; I fare best when the clock is ticking. I’m not saying it to be an ass, I know that my academic successes are a blessing. But I didn’t have a full appreciation of the benefits hard work can reap, because I’d become so accustomed to just breezing by in school.
I got to the ceremony, and listened to some of the stories of other award recipients, and I was truly humbled. One kid, a commencement speaker, came over on a fishing boat from Viet Nam at age five. He has a 4.0 and is going on to a business program. He’s involved in half a dozen clubs, went on a fellowship program to China, and helps his uncle run a business. Another woman had a 3.95, which she maintained while raising three school-aged boys, running the books for her husband’s small business, and also involving herself in school programs in whatever time she could otherwise be using for sleep. There were many other stories of people who completely worked their ass off while struggling through strokes, disabilities, language barriers, family problems. Every single person on that stage deserved to be there, and I found myself feeling like “What the hell did *I* do, take a few extra lit courses? It didn’t even feel like work.” But I guess that’s the thing. If you’re doing what you love, and you’re doing what you’re talented in, then it’s not going to feel like work. To the rest of the world, it’s a sacrifice, but to the individual, it’s just the way of things. I hear people tell me “Yes, but you work full-time and still keep your grades up, and find time to write!” Let me be the first to say that this so-called “achievement” is total dogshit compared to some of the things I heard tonight.
I came away from the ceremony with a renewed sense of wanting to apply myself, really apply myself, to school, to my writing, to my talents. I want to work towards that 4.0 in my new pursuits at NEU. I want to finish the re-writes on the book and take courses that will get my writing to the next level. I want to stay away from my television (which I’ve done a bang-up job at in the past 9 months), stick with my artwork, sing more, read more, and re-commit myself to better things.
Going to the ceremony wasn’t just good in feeling like I’d accomplished something, although the recognition was nice. Better, it put hard work into perspective for me, and made me want to rededicate myself to the worthy things in my life.
It was a good night.
