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Life lessons from an experienced Saint
Five days from today, my long journey at Mt. Hood Community College will come to an end.
In the summer of 2004, I began taking classes and that fall I joined the staff of The Advocate.
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Following nearly five years of successes and failures, I have finally finished. What takes many students two years to complete took me almost three times as long, but in the process, I learned many things that I probably would not have learned otherwise. I am grateful for the time I have spent and the experiences I have had on this campus.
To finalize my years here, I would like to reiterate some of the greatest lessons I have learned while at MHCC. Hopefully they will help you as much as they have helped me.
Give yourself time. Everyone has their own timeline. Just don’t rush yourself. If you aren’t ready to do something, wait until you are ready. If everyone moved to the same beat, the world would be much less interesting.
Be a leader rather than a follower. As Obi-Wan Kenobi once said in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, “Who is the bigger fool? The fool, or the one who follows him?”
Don’t sacrifice your principles for anyone. Friends and acquaintances come and go every day, but if you can’t look at yourself in the mirror, what is the point of living?
Keep in contact with those you love. The longer you wait to speak with someone, the more difficult it becomes, and the less likely you are to do so.
Don’t be careless with your decisions. Every decision you make has benefits - and consequences.
Don’t think in terms of superiority or inferiority. Everyone has something to offer in this world, no matter who they may be.
Love hard. You never know how much time you have left with a person. They could be fine one day and gone the next.
Live every day like you may not wake up the next morning. Don’t waste your time on petty arguments and misunderstandings. There is so much more to life than this.
Keep your word. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you do break someone’s trust, however, it is not impossible to win it back but it does take time. It takes effort, persistence and clear-cut honesty to rebuild a broken relationship.
Work extensively on eliminating your bad habits. Sometimes quitting something may seem much too difficult to bear, but once you surpass it, you will be happier and your life will be that much better for doing so.
Never lose a love for learning. If you could learn one new thing each day for the rest of your life, you would not even come close to learning everything there is to know in this world, but that is what makes knowledge worth pursuing. Life should be a never-ending learning experience.
Think about what you throw away. If you have the chance to recycle something, go the extra mile and do it. After all, in the words of my biology instructor, “When you throw something away, where is away?”
There is no “r” in twelve. Copy-edit everything you write. From resumes to e-mails, spelling and grammar do matter. Spell-check everything. It will make all the difference in the world.
This is only a sampling of the things I have learned while on this campus - some from the classroom and some from life in general. If these things help you in any way then my time here will have been worthwhile.
To finalize this, my last column as an MHCC student and Advocate staff member, I would like to say thank you. To Bob Watkins, my adviser, for pushing me through the muck and always being a helping hand. To Dan Ernst, my assistant adviser, for always telling it to me straight. To my staff this year and in years past - you have been my friends and my second home. To all of my instructors, thank you for passing your wisdom on to me. To all others I have met over the last five years, thank you for everything.
When I first came to MHCC, the slogan was, Knowledge for Success - nowadays it is Be Your Dream. Either way, I am happy to leave knowing that I have been a Saint.
The Advocate reserves the right to not publish comments based on their appropriateness.
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