"Men of ill judgment ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it." -Sophocles
 | Hello world! If you are new, welcome to the Luminstruct blog! My name is Mark and I am currently working on a "365-Word Project" by posting reflections on various words every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The reflections can be serious, can be about Student Affairs, or might just be some silly ramblings. Either way, I will do my best to take you on a journey through the personal story of my life. I hope you enjoy. Today's word is "Lost" |
For some, I feel as though your first year at college is like a large game of Jenga. When you were a senior at high school, you were the tallest tower and everything was going your way. Your base was strong, your family brought you up on good morals and good judgement. You are bold, you are strong and you are full of confidence!
When entering college, you realize that almost everyone is now the same height of tower and the only way to become the tallest is to build yourself higher so people can look up to you. You are surrounded by people who have built their towers differently, and you begin rearranging your beliefs and values. You find the questionable loose pieces of yourself and remove them in order to figure everything out, but you still hold onto your core values. You take risks and remove some of those foundation tiles to test the limits and see what you are capable of. Your tower starts losing its integrity.
Everything in your life may feel slanted and you begin to wonder how you got there in the first place. You may try to be more careful, but as you continue to raise higher, your tower is now stretched too thin and you become lost. Your tower crumbles to the ground and your hopes and dreams may become scattered across the room. There is not a future in sight and you aren't sure what to do next.
Luckily, there are people like me and other Student Affairs professionals available to help set you back up. This time, we give you the resources to succeed, we switch out the Jenga blocks and give you Legos to build with. We give you instructional manuals to begin building yourself back up. We secretly hope that you will someday throw the instructions out and build your own masterpeice, one that we would never imagine was possible! Your tower will reach the stars, and it couldn't have been possible without an occasional rebuild from a collapse.
The point to my story is that no matter who you are, student, teacher, banker, candlestick maker, etc., there will be someday that you go down the wrong path and make the wrong choice. The fact that we are human, we might even make the same mistake multiple times. Don't let this define you, don't continue building with Jenga blocks. Learn how to pick yourself back up and use new material and learn from your mistakes. There is no such thing as a bad person, just someone who makes mistakes, it is up to you how you put your pieces together. Let's get building.
Question time: Who has been someone in your life who has given you the tools to succeed when you had originally fallen?
When entering college, you realize that almost everyone is now the same height of tower and the only way to become the tallest is to build yourself higher so people can look up to you. You are surrounded by people who have built their towers differently, and you begin rearranging your beliefs and values. You find the questionable loose pieces of yourself and remove them in order to figure everything out, but you still hold onto your core values. You take risks and remove some of those foundation tiles to test the limits and see what you are capable of. Your tower starts losing its integrity.
Everything in your life may feel slanted and you begin to wonder how you got there in the first place. You may try to be more careful, but as you continue to raise higher, your tower is now stretched too thin and you become lost. Your tower crumbles to the ground and your hopes and dreams may become scattered across the room. There is not a future in sight and you aren't sure what to do next.
Luckily, there are people like me and other Student Affairs professionals available to help set you back up. This time, we give you the resources to succeed, we switch out the Jenga blocks and give you Legos to build with. We give you instructional manuals to begin building yourself back up. We secretly hope that you will someday throw the instructions out and build your own masterpeice, one that we would never imagine was possible! Your tower will reach the stars, and it couldn't have been possible without an occasional rebuild from a collapse.
The point to my story is that no matter who you are, student, teacher, banker, candlestick maker, etc., there will be someday that you go down the wrong path and make the wrong choice. The fact that we are human, we might even make the same mistake multiple times. Don't let this define you, don't continue building with Jenga blocks. Learn how to pick yourself back up and use new material and learn from your mistakes. There is no such thing as a bad person, just someone who makes mistakes, it is up to you how you put your pieces together. Let's get building.
Question time: Who has been someone in your life who has given you the tools to succeed when you had originally fallen?
