Ryan’s Journal: What a Time to Be Alive
by Ryan Pew
The heart of a champion is measured not by their victories but by how they come back from defeat.
I may not have mentioned it before, but I am a University of Georgia grad and proud to be a Bulldawg!
My beloved college football team went into double overtime and defeated Oklahoma in this year’s Rose Bowl. That win propelled them to compete in the National Championship next week against Alabama. This is the first time in 38 years since UGA has competed for the title and I’m excited to see how they do.
Why do I bring this up you may ask? Well, for one thing, I am taking every chance I get to celebrate the great season my team is having. The second reason is that the current news is absolutely depressing and tends to drag me down.
One goal for the new year is to surround myself with positive people and mindsets. The news doesn’t fit into that.
I previously brought up failure and how it can transform or destroy someone. As mentioned, I attended UGA and graduated with a degree in Economics. One of the required courses was Finance 300, all business majors had to have it and it wasn’t the easiest of courses. I enrolled and about midway through I realized I was going to fail the class. Not even close to a C, a solid F.
I had a choice to make then and there. Stop attending and sleep in ( it was and 8am class) or continue on with zero stress, absorb and study and then retake it in the summer. I chose the latter and was very happy about it.
My professor saw that I continued attending and partaking in the class and I built a relationship with him. As a student it was great, I felt like I was auditing the class and was not worried about grades. When the summer rolled around I was able to master the course and finished with a B+.
I actually still look back at that time with fondness, even years later.
So much of our life can be full of regret, why not embrace the failure and learn from it?
I did and am sure you can as well.
Image credit: Josh Hallett
