So this week has just made my top ten worst and best weeks of college. And fortunately for the people who read my little web page, you get a cataloged list of the goods and the bads.
Bad
1. I didn’t sleep more then about 20 hours all week including the all-niter between Monday and Tuesday.
2. I had a presentation for a final project, and two tests (at least I thought it was two).
3. One of those tests was in ECE 210, which is the most mathematically difficult class I’ve ever had.
4. The test I thought was on Friday was really this monday….DOH!
5. A formerly good friend and I had a large disagreement that ended in quite an unfortunate manner.
6. I got sick, and because of not sleeping I got much much sicker.
7. My good friends dad passed away.
8. Nothing this week caused me to meet any women.
Good
1. I finished my first “Major” project since I’ve been here.
2. I became better friends with the four guys in my project group.
3. I learned a lot about working on a team with a deadline.
4. I pushed my body and mind to new limits.
5. I pushed the limits of my values on friends and family, and found where I bent and where I broke.
6. I realized that I may or may not be in the right place, but that confusion is OK.
You may or may not understand what all I’m talking about, but I’d like to explain a little of it, so maybe you the reader and I can be on the same page. On my bad list a lot of the things are pretty self explanatory. But the stuff on the good may confuse you. You see, I find in my life that the times you are the lowest in your life, it forces you to re-Identify the important things in your life. This is what I found.
I found that no matter what, you must pick and choose your battles very wisely. Bend if you must, but never break. When something is important to someone else, sometimes it is better to let it go, i.e. bend, but sometimes something is important to you, and it must be identified whether this is a principal issue, or something else. If it is a principal issue, you cannot even bend, and no matter what you must not break.
You see, some of the things forced me to very closely look at what is important to me. Things that had to deal w/ very good friends, family, my grades, my health, and my future. I had to decide if I was going to stand up for my family, and a principal, and because I did I lost a friend. While I was sad, I am relieved, because now I have tested myself and found that I did what I thought was right, and didn’t back down when it counted. Also, I had to decide whether to sacrifice my time to study for one class, to work on a large project in another, and then whether to sleep, or study for a class, and also I had to decide between taking care of myself or working for a grade.
While I don’t know if I made all the right choices, but the choice to hold my ground for my principals, and the aftermath of that, made me realize that not all choices are clear cut right or wrong, you don’t always win or lose, and anyone that thinks so is a fool. But no matter what you will most of the time be confused with something in your life, and that is completely OK. This confusion is what people rise out of, to a new understanding of what they really are. I know now that I will not have the answers, and no matter how much I want to rationalize things that happen to me, life isn’t rational, and people aren’t rational. So when the chips are down, you make the best of what you have, and go on, and no matter how hard it seems, it could be worse, or you could just break free and find the light of day again.
You see, I’m no longer friends w/ the person I was talking about, but I found that I will never know what the direction my life will take is, or who I’ll meet on the way, and when you lose a friend over something so seemingly small you have to just take the time to see if it is worth it or not. And if it is, you just take the memories of that person, and file them under “days of a time gone by” and go on.
This all afforded me to think clearly for about 5 minutes this week, but during that time I decided some things. One of which is that I’m going to accept a position with Kimberly-Clark (the company that manufactures Kleenex and stuff like that) in L.A. next winter. And also that I may or may not being doing the right thing for me. If you look at my rant from 8/8/2000 in my recent events I said that I didn’t think that I was doing the right things, or wasn’t doing the things I think I should be doing. But I know now that I was wrong then in saying that. Simply because I wanted to do things that I wasn’t, but how could I know where I am is the wrong place, or not doing the right thing. All I know is that life throws things at you sometimes that isn’t exactly where you think you should be, but you don’t know, that could simply be a means to an end, and you could end up doing exactly what is perfect for you. So I now think that I might be doing the right things to get where I want to be, or maybe no, but I’m making a lot out of the time and place I’m in.
So now I’m going to stop carrying on like a mad man, and just say that the only thing that I really want now that isn’t immediately available in life is a new relationship. I don’t know if that is something that is absolutely important, or the right time seeing how I barely have time to sleep, but I’m tired of being single.
So that is my little rant for today, thanks for reading — Ben
BTW, so there Scott I at least did a small page update, and this summer watch for my new spiffy menu.
