Can’t win if you don’t try

In my high school career, I’ve gained a reputation as a joker. For the people who know me anyhow, everyone else likely sees me as “Jesus”, or the weirdo in the back of the room. I never cared about passing my classes, for the first two years of high school, I didn’t see the point. I failed Algebra one five semesters in a row. I failed not because I couldn’t do it, but because I figured it was dumb. I figured that enjoyment, good times, and laughter were more important. Sophomore year, I failed a semester of English II, and Junior year I failed a semester of English III. Why did I failed these classes? I failed both, because I was too stubborn to finish one assignment. Yes, that’s right, I failed both, because of one measly assignment each. English II was writing a series of ten poems for Lord of The Flies, and English III was because of the Visions of War essay. I remember them so well, because I got them handed back so many times, that I outright refused to do them anymore. So, I didn’t, and I failed. In the midst of all this failure, I stand here before you, with a perfect chance of graduating. Failure does not decide your fate, it’s what you decide to do after you fail. I don’t consider my high school life to be a failure overall, because I did have fun, and eventually I did pass everything.

I spent Freshman, Sophomore, and a good portion of Junior year staying after school to fool around. I remember being a freshman, and finding out it was possible to stay after. My friends and I thought this was the most amazing thing. We spent after school sneaking down to the store, trying desperately not to get caught by Mr. Caswell. We’d get on the school roof, and hassle the upperclassmen. Sophomore year came, and it was business as usual. There was one time during sophomore year, that my friends and I hung like vultures over a senior celebration after school. They had cake, drinks, and all kinds of refreshments. When everyone had cleared out, we were given cake, and the holy grail was presented to us. They gave us all of the drink containers that were left over. This seemingly simple action of giving a few sophomores some barely full drink containers might seem small and inconsequential, but it was the impetus for something amazing. It started out simply enough, we decided to mix the drinks in one of the containers. We ended up with a concoction of Hawaiian punch, orange soda, iced tea, root beer, and the pièce de résistance, blackberry ginger ale. Now, this story wouldn’t be worth telling if it stopped right there, oh no, it went much farther. We decided it was great idea for each of us to take it home, and take turns putting in the grossest, most vile things we could find into it. When my turn came to bring it home, I remember rummaging around trying to find the most disgusting things I could. Barbeque sauce, flour, sriracha, jalapenos, a raw egg, chocolate syrup, salt, lot’s of salt, lemon juice, and bisquick powder are just a few things I put in. We brought it to school, and when the time finally came to drink it, I had no idea what everyone else put in it, and maybe ignorance is bliss. I was the only one who actually drank it, everyone else spat it out. Because of this, everyone ended up buying me a pizza. Within our friend group, this became one of the biggest events to ever take place. We ended up dumping the monstrocity outside of the school, and it smelled for weeks.

This event wasn’t really that amazing, but it did serve as a reminder that just because something is hard to do, doesn’t mean it is worth doing. Sometimes, looking at a situation and realizing, “Wow, this is really dumb.” might be harder than following through. This in my mind is considered a failure, however, it did earn me one of my best friends. I got rewarded by my friends for being brave enough to down the viscous, vile liquid, but how dumb do you have to be to actually do it? Sophomore me, apparently. I believe my brain cells have at least begun propagating after this incident, and something like this would be put on my list of “Do not do under any circumstances.”.

Many smaller incidents occured after school, like throwing one of our friends  lunch box in a tree, and then on the roof. Both times someone had to climb up to get it. The time my friend and I were fighting outside, and the principle calmly asked us to stop because he thought it was a friendly tussle, which made us both laugh enough to forget about what had happened. Once I climbed the flagpole, and eventually got to a place where my pants got caught. I tried forcing my way out, and my pants ripped from halfway down my calf up to the bottom of my zipper. In the midst of all of these failures, lessons have been learned. For every lunch box thrown on a roof, someone is needed to get it down. For every fight, a mediator can save people from getting hurt. For every idiot climbing a flagpole, there should have been someone telling them not to do it. It’s fine that nobody did of course, I understand that everyone was willing to watch someone stupid enough to actually do it. These are all examples of failure, and for each example, a lesson was learned. Learning to respect others property, resolve fights in a peaceful way, and not climbing flagpoles seem like simple lessons, which is true, but it doesn’t make them any less important.

I may not be the wisest young man in our grade, I may not be valedictorian, class president, prom king (or lack thereof), or one of the jocks. I am, however, intelligent enough to understand the mistakes I have made, and learn from them. Everybody has this power, yet not everybody fixes their mistakes. It took me two and a half years to realize I needed math to graduate, so I caught up on all of it. I never even had to take summer school, because once I realized I could do it, and needed to, I did. In a year and a half, I caught up on three missing math credits, and an English credit. It was not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but I understood I had made a mistake, and it was nobody else’s job to rectify it. I stand before you, a young man who at the end of last year, was told by everybody that graduation would be next to impossible for me. Failure is not the end game, it is a chance to begin anew, learn from your mistakes, and come back at your problems more powerfully than ever before. In the words of Roy H. Williams, “A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.”. I could not disagree more with this statement. Every person has their own mistakes to learn from, a mistake for one person could be a victory for another. Look at yourself, ask yourself if what you are doing could result in failure. If the answer is yes, do it anyway. You can’t succeed if you never tried in the first place.

Photo by mikemol on Foter.com / CC BY