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And So it Begins:
On the Start of a new semester
Jay Bildstein
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Buying
notebooks, pencils, pens filled with a sense of excitement about the
beginning of a new page in our lives, a tantalizing, partially familiar,
unknown; the start of classes. Yes, for most of us, it is not the
first time we have begun a new semester. Even for those of us who
are first beginning our university careers, we have the experience
of high school behind us. Teachers and students we all wait with baited
breath, pondering the possibilities that a new term holds.
Personally, I have never begun a new semester of school filled with
dread. On the contrary, I had feelings of excitement for the limitless
possibilities that starting a new semester at college portend; dread
was to come some months later, around the time of midterm examinations
or finals when I discovered that my fresh faced enthusiasm at the
start of the semester had transmogrified into a sullen complacency,
wherein I attended class (if I attended at all,) counting the minutes
till the boredom ended and I was free to go talk with my friends about
which gal I wanted to date or which bands music I was listening
to at the moment.
Consequently, I feared my tests because I had not prepared for them
all along.
To where had my interest in mastering the fine points of managerial
accounting fled? Where was my fiery desire to understand the profundity
of Shakespeares works? Why had my interest in comprehending
Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus transformed into
a distinct desire to sleep every time I picked up the book? Why indeed?
Today, in the United States of America, you can turn on your television
late at night to be bombarded by infomercials for products promising
a slimmer you, a richer you, a happier you. All you need to do is
call an 800 number give them your Visa, MasterCard or American Express
information and with three easy payments of $29.95 you can be the
person you have always dreamt of being. Some days later you receive
the books, tapes and materials that youve sent for. You start
using them for a couple of days when it suddenly dawns upon you that
the program to lose weight or make more money or be happier takes
something that you hadnt contemplated when you made your purchase;
WORK !
Ah yes my friends, work is the secret ingredient that we must add
to any equation in order to make our dreams come true. We need to
work so we may turn the excitement of our initial attendance in classes
into a semester long quest to excel; not simply to get good grades
but to truly gain an understanding of the material we are studying.
Work is that dirty word that many of us dont want to hear about.
I must say that when I was going through school the notion of work
seemed to me to be a pox on my existence. After all, better to go
have some beers with friends, play video games, go on a date or have
a day at the beach. Work was to be avoided, at least so I felt.
Somewhere along the way in my scholastic career though, I learned
an important lesson that I would like to share with all of you. At
first, I thought that my desire to avoid doing my school work was
simply because I was a hedonist, dedicated to immediate pleasures
instead of long term goals. The truth was anything but
I was
simply scared of doing my work.
You see when you start a semester the promise of knowledge and self-advancement
looms large. There is a disconnect from the fact that simply enrolling
in courses does not impart to us any understanding about the nature
and information that is to be gained in those same courses. At the
end of the day, it is up to us to learn. A course, or a book, or a
lecture is merely a ticket to opportunity. If we want to take advantage
of that opportunity it is our responsibility to take that ticket and
get on the bus ride to knowledge, a ride that finds us at the steering
wheel.
Learning can be scary. We fear failing. We fear missing opportunities
to do something else. We fear confronting our own abilities. In the
end if we are to grow as human beings we must realize that to do the
work, we must vanquish our fears.
Take your enthusiasm for this new semester and use it as an impetus
to make a pact with yourself; that you wont be afraid of finding
out just how good you can be. Then, unbridled of fear, go do the work.
It pays.
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