Monday, October 25, 2010

Minimums for Maximums.

College, so far, is hectic balancing act of social interactions, extra curricular activities, new people, and, yes, of course, academia. I am taking quite an easy schedule this semester, which is nice. I get to do a lot of things that I wouldn't normally be able to do, and get really plugged into the community that defines Taylor. It's great. I've already had some really wonderful experiences, and it's not even Thanksgiving yet.

Now, I'm not sure if you are aware, but at college, I am required to take classes with other human beings. This means that learning takes place not only through the knowledge of professors and the text that we study, but also from the input of other classmates that have, sometimes, very strong opinions. It's so important to learn from one another. What a poem means to one person, means something entirely different to another. True learning only takes place within a community. Ya know, the whole iron sharpens iron thing.

Something that I have seen in every classroom, however, is a group of people that simply want to get things done. They want the grade, they want the teacher to think they are intelligent, and they want to do it in a way that requires the least amount of work. They are building a beautiful home with all the decorations and furnishings of a perfect student, but they are building it on sand. Efficiency becomes the most important thing, and excellence isn't even considered. I just participated in a class that was student-led. The professor wasn't there, a college kids dream, right? But we were left with specific instructions of what to do. The assignment was fairly simple, something we could've gotten done in half the class time. Instead, we just schemed and made-up brilliant ways to make it look like we did what was assigned to us. We were planning these mistaken impressions, while, every five minutes the cliche kid in the corner chimed in with a banal, "Can't we just... leave?"

Now, I am avid user of sparknotes, and don't always things get done by their due date, but I also have a hunger for knowledge, and a responsibility of excellence. "Blah blah blah education is power. Blah blah blah education is a gift." I realize that I'm being painfully cliche here, and, if you have any experience in an educational facility, you've been told not to take advantage of your education. But all of these people are aware of that. They are just lazy, and they work hard at being lazy. Ironic, huh?

I want to embrace the quality of being outstanding, and apply it to everything I do.

Because of the love of God, I am already set apart.. so why don't I start acting like it?

We need to understand that the result of a situation is not what we're working for. It's the journey that gets us there. It's the long hours in the night when we only have one more page to go, it's the proofreading, it's the re-reading, it's riding our bike instead of taking our cars, and it's cooking a meal instead of grabbing something to go.

We are all excellent creatures.


So, friends, let's get off of the lift, and hike up the mountain.
See you kids at the top.

3 comments:

  1. I love you so much kinsley.
    I love the way you write, completely.
    Your blogs always encourage and challenge me.

    ReplyDelete