Saturday, February 14, 2015

When You Forget...

This week I walked into one of my classes, everything was normal, I was at ease, the students in the class were chatty as normal.  I began to get my stuff out of my bag to get ready for class, the scene only to be described as calm.  Then as happens I overheard the students beside me speaking one to another,  “. . .  so for my project I . . . ”  So in my mind I am like “project… what project”, then that thing which was left back in the innermost dark regions of my mind resurrects and—well, then calm is over.

Forgetting things is one of the worst feelings in the world.  I wasn’t lazy either, I had two really big midterms the week before and in my great efforts to succeed in them, I plainly and simply forgot.  Telling that to your professor though, is not really the greatest recovery strategy. 

Forgetting this project immediately put me at the zero percentile in the class. 

While standing beneath an un-scalable ten thousand foot mountain face, a mountain climber looks up and gets chills.  A student looking at an equivalent ten thousand foot academic mountain also gets chills. Difference being, the climber feels pumped the student feels pummeled. 

Bad grades are not the end of the world.  In fact I will be more than fine.  Bad things are really frustrating when they happen because of dumb reasons.  For instance, even though in both cases you lose, it is interesting that fans leave sporting events happier when their teams has just lost by 30 points then when they lose by 1 point in the last second by a bad call by the referee.   


Details make big differences.  That is why it is so important to pay attention to the small things.  I need to make sure that I am diligent in keeping track of when things are due.  I am going to every week go through every class of mine, to make sure that I know exactly when everything is due so that I don’t miss the things that make the differences, the details.  

2 comments:

  1. Cameron,

    Sounds like a pretty rough experience man. You know, I hate to say it but I for one am grateful when people share experiences like these because it provides a fantastic opportunity for me to learn as well. Remembering things has always been a very weak skill of mine I'm sorry to say. It sees as though I always have a million and one things going on and just trying to remember all of those I find that I always miss something and that it's usually something rather important. One thing that I've found really helps me to remember things is not just writing them down in a super visible place that I check often, but also having an alarm go off for those especially important things.

    Best of luck to you man,

    Bryson

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh man that sounds like my worst nightmare but the worst thing you can do is to get down. I'd take it as a learning experience and vow to never make that mistake again. Life is about experiencing everything. I usually have a pretty extensive to do list as to not forget anything.

    Good Luck Man!

    ReplyDelete