I am twenty-one years old and a senior in college. I am 10 months and 10 days away from graduating with a bachelor of science in computer science and a bachelor of arts in history. I have spent my entire life preparing to go out into the “real world”. You know how it feels the week of the first football game each season or the opening night of play when you have put weeks of practice for this one moment? That is the kind of feeling that is starting to well up in me. Sixteen years of schooling filled with sports, clubs, organizations, and relationships are all surmounting to this. So what about it?
This last week I have had several moments where my conscience has pulled away from what I was doing to take a look at the broader picture. My friends and I are at the pinnacle of our lives where all the preparation is ready to demonstrate its worth. We do not have all the talent or skills we will need, but that does not stop us from feeling all the confidence in the world. The reason is we are realizing there is little more for us to be taught before we have experience to compound it with.
I have decided against grad school because I feel it is time to go make an impact on the world. I will add that I do fully believe I can do anything. We were all raised on the idea. Remember when you were in high school and starting to think about what you might want to do with the rest of your life? Remember when you were a kid on the playground playing out your dreams? Remember when you were in middle school sports and your coaches told you that you could be professional athlete if you only dedicated yourself to it? I grew up watching Michael Jordan. I own Space Jam to this day. Its soundtrack has the song “I Believe I Can Fly”. It pretty much sums up the whole idea.
Obama’s “Yes, We Can” campaign is occurring at the perfect time in my life. The idea gives me a charge, an inspiration. However, it is not simply about the fact that we can do anything. I want to be able to look back and say, “Yeah, we did.” If there is one thing I want to accomplish in my life, it is to leave the world a better place than I found it. Before you think I am some hippie, that is not it at all. I want to make an impact that results in a better quality of life. That can come simply from making the people around me more respectful or whether it is a technological revolution in the way we live our lives. Ideally, it would be both. I guess now it is just reaching the time to go give life “the ol’ college try.”
Eugene Wallingford just recently wrote this blog about embracing failure. The topic is one I often think about because it is an area I feel I tend to excel in above others. Thus, I thought I would provide my own opinion on the matter.
First off, when Wallingford says, “what other people call failure is learning to fly,” he is wrong. According the analogy he is running with, failure is hitting the ground after jumping off a cliff. Taking the chance at hitting the ground in an effort to learn to fly is the same as risking failure in an effort to succeed. Just thought I’d throw that out there at the start.
My personal thoughts are it is not about embracing failure. Instead, it is about pushing through the failure until I finally reach success. That’s why I did not title this “embracing failure” as Wallingford did. When I am struggling with a programming problem, I always define it to my friends as “beating my head against the wall.” Please note that only occasionally am I actually beating my head against the wall. It is a fight. When I come up with a solution that does not work, it frustrates me further. If I never figured out a working solution, I would be left in a state of extreme frustration. This is one reason I rarely finish a programming problem unfinished for another day. It will irritate me and distract me from everything I do until I finish it. There is no embracing the problem. There is only beating it into submission.
What drives me to continue endure such aggravations? In some respects, it is about the struggle itself, but I intend to devote a full post to this idea someday so I will skip it for now. Ultimately, it is the euphoria after achieving success which keeps me going. The more frustrating problems are the most rewarding to conquer. I have been known to take off running down the hallway in my dorm yelling in excitement after discovering a working solution. It is because of this that I claim it is not about embracing the failure, but rather pushing through it.
My determination to excel is not only evident in programming. In high school, it was not uncommon for me to spend a couple hours out in 100 degree heat hitting a shopping cart full of tennis balls by myself just to work on a few shots. When I was in late elementary and early middle school, I would be out in my driveway shooting hoops quite literally until it was so dark I could not see the basket anymore. When I run or bike, particularly with long distances, I always end up going faster as I progress. It is not that I start off too slow, but rather that I become charged with the idea of reaching the finish line. In my Personal Wellness class just week, we had to jog a half-mile. I found myself almost sprinting by the last 200m. While playing videogames, I will repeat a particular task over and over again until I can finally beat it. Last year, it took me ten hours to be the final bonus mission on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the hardest difficulty. The mission was a maximum of 60 seconds long. You do the math.
Perhaps the best way to summarise my thoughts on the matter is with this well-known phrase:
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”