University is both a wonderfully happy and yet a horribly tragic time in our lives. Each one of us slowly passes through years of university with smiles on our faces. We work our butts off to impress whoever is grading our next assignment, essay or whatever back breaking item we will be working on.
But when you get back that paper, essay, or assignment and you see a bad mark, you feel like your entire soul was just ripped from your body and sent through a shredder. We all know this feeling, and unless you are one of those insanely smart people who seemingly know everything about the world, you have been in this position of complete and utter disappointment.
You smile at your friends, lie and say you got a 75. You finally arrive home and the floodgates open. You cry, swear, curse the world and maybe even lay on your bed and kick your legs in the air while bouncing on your back like a 5 year old refusing to go to bed (oh little do they know).
You cry into the mirror like that famous Dane Cooke skit screaming “I DID MY BEST, I DID MY BEST” until you hear your roomie unlock the door and you quickly pull yourself together and bathe, silently, in your own self pity.
This long, stammering introduction has brought me to my point.
University does not define who you are. Marks do not define who you are.
University is designed to push you to your absolute limits, and then write a 3000-word essay about it, only to receive yet another self-shattering mark.
But despite all of the bad, let’s look at the happy side of things. You meet incredible people in university. You make incredible memories. You eat unmentionable amounts of poutine and pizza. All of these things make you smile and everything seems all right in the world.
So much pressure comes with university and yet no one has ever mastered it. There are some people who try to “be the best” and master university, which is seemingly impossible. Mastery takes years and years of extreme dedication, and to those who believe it is possible to “master” university, you are simply wasting your time.
This is a time in life to grow, explore, and adventure. This is a time to experiment with your body, mind and soul to find what makes your heart race, and what makes your toes curl. However, when it’s all said and done those awesome days and those unfortunate days do not define you, but remember, your experiences in that time do.
What defines you is the type of person you project to the world. How willing you are to help others. How willing you are to take charge of your own destiny.
When you graduate as an undergrad, on average you are 21 or 22. How could you possibly know yourself when all you have done for four years is grow? Growing never stops and we never stop learning.
Growing is what defines you. Learning is what defines you. Loving is what defines you.
These years of freedom are so precious because we learn to stand up for ourselves all while kissing our prof’s butts. We learn that maybe one bad mark is all you need to inspire something magnificent.
I know it may seem like I hated my university experience, which is wrong: I loved university because it helped me find my own greatness.
Even though in four months when I graduate, I’ll be entering the real world with no plan of attack, I will be more than prepared to take it. I will be prepared because I have experienced the wonderfully happy and yet horribly tragic time in my life that was university.