On Quitting

Josh Skillman wasn’t just one of the most attractive professors with the coolest accents I’ve ever had. I think that he may also be the wisest. Not only was he extremely relatable (mostly because he was still so young himself), but he had the power to drill in important points and recite from memory what I consider one of the greatest poems I’ve heard:

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will. When the road you're trudging seems all up hill. When funds are low and the debts are high. And you want to smile, but have to sigh. When care is pressing you down a bit, rest if you must, but don't you quit. Life is queer with its twists and turns. As every one of us sometimes learns. And many a failure turns about, and he might've won had he stuck it out: Don't give up though the pace seems slow - You may succeed with just another blow. Often the goal is nearer than it seems to a faint and faltering man. Often the struggle has given up when he might have captured the victor's cup, and he learned too late, when the night slipped down, how close he was to the golden crown. Success is failure turned inside out - The silver tint of the clouds of doubt. And you can never tell how close you are, it may be near when it seems so far: So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit - It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Don’t you quit.

I can’t ever quit. And this is both a negative and positive thing.

Let’s start off on the bright side. My perseverance gets me what I want. I keep thinking up new ways to find it. I’ll work my ass off to be the best. And if something goes wrong, I look for a way around it. With me, third time is the charm. It’s always in the third year of something. Took 3 years to become Editor in Chief of the high school paper, three years to be a starter on a club softball team, three years to find a successful study strategy. And now it looks like it is going to take 3 years to find my true friends. (This means I have one more year. I’ll explain later). Even though this may take a while, it will happen. Until then, I won’t stop working for it.

I’m a fighter. I don’t let anything go. I’m stubborn. I’ve learned this about myself, but I don’t want to change it. With the current situation I’m in, my mom says I need to just drop it and let this girl be the immature one, not to let her get to me; after all, it’s just stuff. Here’s the thing: it’s MY stuff. Stuff I love that I was nice enough to let her borrow. Why should I let her keep it? I’m not going to let that bitch win. I feel like the colonists in the Revolutionary War. Down in the beginning, but victorious in the end. Where would we be now if they chose to just abandon their cause and let the British win?

Quitting is hard. Not quitting is harder.

[Next topic: illegal immigration, and how to stop it (someone remind me to write on this)]