Content Combat: Time and To-Do List Style

Joshua Patrick:

            The air is crisp and fresh, the projects/papers/tests are stacking up, and my stash of scarves is becoming more acceptable to wear. That’s right, it is fall in Murray.  Glorious, wonderful, red-and-gold-leaves, boots-and-tights-sporting fall. Now fall is typically on the list of my top four favorite seasons, so I’ve been looking forward to it coming around for quite awhile now. However, this fall has been crammed-jammed-rammed-spammed full of things to check off my never-ending to-do list.

            Honestly, the intense amount of stuff on my (and everyone else I’ve talked to) list has been a LOT overwhelming, almost to the point where I’ve forgotten to enjoy Fall! Unbelievable? I know.

            I have a story about this fall and a little bit of advice to follow. Would you like to hear it? Well, like my friend Julie told me when I asked her if she wanted to hear a hilarious story, you should be thinking, “I’m probably going to hear it anyway.” If you were thinking that—you were right! Here we go, Josh, here we go!

            Once upon a time there was a college gal that had a semester that looked like this: meeting, paper, quiz, project, meeting, meeting, planning, research, quiz, paper, Hucks, project, quiz, planning, test, test, fun, test, meeting, paper, paper, quiz, research, Hucks, abstract, homework, paper, summary of something tedious and boring, paper, quiz, test, something that is stressful, test, project, meeting, paper, quiz. Well, with that sort of a semester taking over this college gal’s life, she started to forget about the thing she considered success. One day, the girl was applying for a scholarship to study abroad in Italy and Greece during the winter and she had to fill out a really long application with lots of questions and even two essays. One of the questions for the essays was “What are your dreams for the future? What will success look like for you and how do you foresee study abroad contributing to this success?” and that question really got me—er—the college girl to thinking about her old definition for success. After contemplating, she finally wrote this:

Recently my younger brother, Nick, looked at my mother and said, “Josh will be your child that grows up to live in a cardboard box, Max will be the one who grows up to be famous, I’ll be rich, and Maddie will be the happy one.” Somehow my brother Josh (yes, the one voted most likely to make his home between pieces of soggy cardboard) decided that because I will be the content family member that I get the blessing of sharing my guest room with him.

After agreeing to loan Josh a pillow and Poptarts occasionally, I began to think about this idea of “being happy” and where that came to be a defining factor of my life. I realized that since I was little, my parents have shared with me one critical secret of success, a secret that I have held on to and use to define my past, everyday, and future successes. The secret? Know when you are happy.

In the midst of a week crammed with papers, tests, meetings, and research, I have been given the gift of being able to wake up and think “Hey, I’m happy.” Although that doesn’t mean that I am a calm, non-competitive hippie-esque student, it does give me the opportunity to live each day by the experiences I’m handed (rather than by the mile-long checklist on my desk). This secret my parents have shared with me has given me the chance to become someone who celebrates the everyday of life.

I have goals for my future. I dream of becoming the President of Student Affairs at a University, I dream of having a vibrant family life, and I dream of traveling with my family. Yes, achieving each of these things would be a form of success; however, my true view of success would be the ability to become what Nick has planned for me--the ability to be content.  I would love to grow up to be content and be able to look back on my life and measure success not by what activities were on my resume or what awards I won, but by the experiences I encountered.

        

Okay, Okay! You guessed it—that story was about me! I wrote that essay to win some money so I could go abroad, but really that essay was a huge reminder to me. A reminder to stop and enjoy the process. A reminder to not get caught up in that constant battle against time and to do lists. A reminder to do the mundane school things, but focus on the good parts (I love my major, I love my roommate, Applebees has half priced appetizers after nine, you know, the important stuff).  

College will challenge you in ways you could never imagine, but I hope that you will remember that the biggest challenge of all is to remember to love being content. Because even cardboard-box-users need a little bit of happiness.

Lots of Love,

Your Poptart Provider