"The Upside of Quitting"
I initially listened to this podcast because I thought the title was, "The Upside of Quilting". I was pleasantly surprised that it was about "quitting" not "quilting", though both would be nice to hear about.
Sometimes being dyslexic is exciting, because you never really know what you are going to get, or if you are at the right address, at the right time. It can be interesting, or embarrassing, but I am choosing interesting. If you ask my husband, he would pick "annoying", and to his "annoying" I would say, "I make it worth it".
Back to the quitting thing. This episode made me feel better about myself. It made me remember that my failures are often stepping stones. What a terribly boring saga, if all I did was win, win, win. There are times I have quit at winning.
In college I never got a "B". I only got "A's". I'll admit that I chose something that was not terribly intellectual, but I still tried hard. I learned what professors wanted, and I gave it to them 91%-100% of the time. By the time my senior year came around, I no longer cared about getting good grades, but by then I had a 4.0 and 4 months of school left.
My last semester, a speech professor told our class that she did not give "A's". That was throwing down the gauntlet, as far as I was concerned. It was on!! I was going to have to get "A's" my last semester of university, and I did. Really? A speech class that no one gets and "A" in? She did give me a 89.4%, and I went to her and pointed out that her assessment of our speeches, by nature, was subjective. It was not a math class, and her margin of subjectiveness would bump me into the "A" range. I graduated Summa Cum Laude.
A few years later, after one semester of Grad school, I flunked out. I received a letter from University of Nevada, Reno, stating I was not longer qualified to participate in their university education. I failed because I quit 2/3 of the way through the semester, knowing what quitting meant.
What a liberating feeling, to be a quitter. Since then, I have been striving to be a better quitter. I did not crumble into a million pieces when I quit grad school. I survived, and well. Now, if I don't like a book, I quit reading it. If I don't like my dinner so much, I quit eating it. If a movie is terrible (which is often) I turn it off. I realize those don't cost me much, but it is a start. Even though I am the first born in my family, I am trying not to act like it.
I initially listened to this podcast because I thought the title was, "The Upside of Quilting". I was pleasantly surprised that it was about "quitting" not "quilting", though both would be nice to hear about.
Sometimes being dyslexic is exciting, because you never really know what you are going to get, or if you are at the right address, at the right time. It can be interesting, or embarrassing, but I am choosing interesting. If you ask my husband, he would pick "annoying", and to his "annoying" I would say, "I make it worth it".
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| Not quitting got me to the top of Mt. Whitney |
Back to the quitting thing. This episode made me feel better about myself. It made me remember that my failures are often stepping stones. What a terribly boring saga, if all I did was win, win, win. There are times I have quit at winning.
In college I never got a "B". I only got "A's". I'll admit that I chose something that was not terribly intellectual, but I still tried hard. I learned what professors wanted, and I gave it to them 91%-100% of the time. By the time my senior year came around, I no longer cared about getting good grades, but by then I had a 4.0 and 4 months of school left.
My last semester, a speech professor told our class that she did not give "A's". That was throwing down the gauntlet, as far as I was concerned. It was on!! I was going to have to get "A's" my last semester of university, and I did. Really? A speech class that no one gets and "A" in? She did give me a 89.4%, and I went to her and pointed out that her assessment of our speeches, by nature, was subjective. It was not a math class, and her margin of subjectiveness would bump me into the "A" range. I graduated Summa Cum Laude.
A few years later, after one semester of Grad school, I flunked out. I received a letter from University of Nevada, Reno, stating I was not longer qualified to participate in their university education. I failed because I quit 2/3 of the way through the semester, knowing what quitting meant.
What a liberating feeling, to be a quitter. Since then, I have been striving to be a better quitter. I did not crumble into a million pieces when I quit grad school. I survived, and well. Now, if I don't like a book, I quit reading it. If I don't like my dinner so much, I quit eating it. If a movie is terrible (which is often) I turn it off. I realize those don't cost me much, but it is a start. Even though I am the first born in my family, I am trying not to act like it.
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