Experience of a Lifetime

(written May 14, 2010)

Hello my friends,

It’s Friday, and I’m done with the day. These weeks are passing so by fast, and even the weeks feel like days to me.  It’s almost the end of the year, and I’m very excited. Today, the weather was so nice, and it was just like a perfect day as my friend Mauricio would say. These days are so nice like to do many things outside; such as taking a walk, going out to the parks, going out with friends and having so much fun. But, unfortunately we have to measure our times wisely, and put first things first. Sometimes we have to say no to things and doing what’s most important, even if we don’t like it. For example, today I had to say no to my performance with my church band. This is really important for me, but since I have too many midterms next week, I had to say no for this time only. But well, I need to get ready for those midterms so can do well on them.

Today, many things happened to me. One of those things was that I realized that there is too much stress going on around campus. I’ve seen people who look stressed, tired etc.  I imagine that it’s because of midterms, projects, work, having a lot of things to do etc.  Especially, today when I went downstairs of my hall I found a friend of mine and I started to talk to her. I asked her about how things were going, and she said “good”, like all people would say. As I engaged more with the conversation I realized that she was stressed and she had many things to do, and big projects to get done. She even told me about how bad she felt from her last midterms which one of them she failed. In addition, she even had to drop out her math class for some reason. She says that she even cried for what she was going through. She looked sad, but I told her not worry too much and start to do what need to do.  I felt sorry for her, and I even imagine all the stress that she went through because I’ve being there too many times. I even thought that I was the only one who was too stressed, but I wasn’t the only one.

That’s why I say that here around campus there is a lot of stress going on. You know, I think that’s the true reality about studying here at college, “nothing will be easy”, but in some way we have to resist and keep moving forward, and the result will be even better. Therefore, we need patience, hard work and dedication on everything that we do.

We always will be learning new things as we go through life, and now I learning how different is to live away from home, and have to take care of myself by my own. I’m learning to put myself in other people shoes, and understanding them better. Sometimes I ask myself about “why, why do we have to go through hard stuff, in order to accomplish something.” Even though I haven’t live enough but I realized that the answer to this is that the hard stuff makes you wise every day, and we learn from our mistakes, and as a result it makes us stronger as a person. So my message today for everyone is to never give up and keep going. Remember that “your greatest weakness becomes your greatest strength.” In addition, Like Rocky Balboa says, “it doesn’t matter how hard you can hit, what matters is how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward.” So, I motivate everyone who is reading this blog to keep working hard and do the best you can on your classes. Good luck!

Roberto