Setbacks and Roadblocks

Have you ever worked really hard on something, only to find out that it was all for nothing? Or maybe you’ve worked hard on a big assignment and later found out that there was a major part that you forgot to do. What about thinking that you were making great progress and then hitting a big setback and having to redo most of your work? Now imagine all of this happening at once. It’s not a very fun thing to go through. That series of events happened to me two nights before the end of first semester. Sometimes the Earth is cruel. Luckily, every problem has a solution.

I had finally finished Blog Post 2 (This one), and I wrote it about the hellish winters in Maine. I had actually written a half-decent paper and I was really excited that I was finally done. When I hit the “Submit” button, I got a message saying that something went wrong. I started to freak out a little, and then tried reloading the page, resetting my Wi-Fi connection, resetting the computer, and even rebooting the router, only to find out that my internet connection had shut off less than halfway through the essay. After all that work, less than a third of it was still saved on Revision Assistant. Needless to say, I was pretty upset that I had lost my work. Sometimes the Earth is cruel. By the time you will be reading this, I will have turned in 3 completely different posts for this assignment. Thanks to vacation school, I was able to revise my essay and turn it in for a passing grade.

During the Capstone process, I hit a few roadblocks, the biggest one happened with less than a month left before the deadline. I was building a guitar and I thought that I had been making good progress. I got in contact with someone who has extensive knowledge about guitars and years of experience repairing them. Within five minutes of talking to him, he showed me that the bridge and pickups were completely in the wrong spot and that unless I redid the entire top, the guitar would never play well. This was a major setback for me as far as time and money. Sometimes the Earth is cruel. Even though I was stressing and freaking out at the time, Steve was able to work around his normal schedule to help me finish building the guitar. With some hard work and determination, we were able to turn the slab of wood into a functional guitar within a few weeks.

Lastly, two days before I was due to present Capstone, I was reminded about the slideshow presentation. I had been so focused on completing the guitar and the portfolio that I completely forgot about the presentation until Isaac Tremblay asked me if I had done it yet. I now had less than 48 hours to create and plan a slideshow presentation that usually takes at least a week or two. Sometimes the Earth is cruel. Thankfully I had the next two days off from work, so I cracked down and put together a somewhat impressive slideshow. I went in the morning that I was scheduled to present and mostly had to wing it since I hadn’t had much time to practice. After presenting, my panel had me leave for a minute so they could discuss my score. When they called me back into the room, I was ecstatic to hear that I got a 4 on everything, including the presentation.

These examples show that sometimes the Earth can be very cruel and there are always hard times and setbacks in life. No matter what hardships are thrown at us, it is important to remember that when one door closes, another door opens. Sometimes the Earth is cruel and it seems to give us nothing but torrential rain, but the sun will always come back out and show us the rainbow.

Photo by the russians are here on Foter.com / CC BY