I believe that as human beings we set standards for ourselves that are not always something we can live up to and I am guilty for that. I like to think of myself as being well-rounded which allows me to have fun standards that I can set and accomplish for myself but also hard standards that make me work constantly on achieving them. I am not the type of person to start something and finish it without going back over it a hundred times, practically eliminating the ending.
Some of the standards I have set for myself include things such as being logical, reasonable and well organized. These standards I set for myself the moment I started college. Growing up I was not logical, reasonable or well-organized but quite the opposite. I think back to my teenage years and I question how my mother kept her cool and didn’t send me off to a boarding school outside of Switzerland. I know that when I graduated high school and started college that I was going to have to change things about myself. I was no longer able to be that free spirited artist who flew by the seat of her pants and waited till the absolute last minute to complete any task. I also knew that if I was going to be anything in my life that school was going to have to come first for once in and that everything else was to play second fiddle. My mother made it very clear that I had two options after high school, I was either going to live at home and go to college or move out and be on my own completely; living at home meant a roof over my head and food so I took option one and it was the best decision for me. School did not come easy to me and going to college full time meant I was going to be putting out a lot of effort in order to maintain good grades. I was told early on that if I didn’t get good grades that my parents were no longer going to pay for school and I would be forced to take student loans which scared me to pieces, maybe that was the turning point in my life. Being the child of a single parent the idea of independence was instilled in my early on so I had that on my side I just needed to learn to organize and prioritize my life.
Turning into a logical person was the first standard on my list. I needed to establish logical goals that I could achieve without killing myself in the process. I needed to evaluate all aspects of my life and figure out where school, work and my social life were going to fit. I logically analyzed everything and started to fit the pieces together. This was something very different than what I was used to. Coming from a person that just did things on a whim and didn’t necessarily think of the consequences was a far cry from being logical. College was the first logical choice I made and that was after I had to make that decision; from there on out I was going to need to think things through before jumping off the cliff. This part of my life (age 18-19) was the part I think that changed the game for me. I started to research not only what I wanted out of life but what I wanted as a person. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, where I wanted to go or what career path I was going to take but I knew I was going in the right direction.
Being reasonable is very difficult for me. I am very strong minded and willed and when I want something I normally just go for it. I needed to stop doing that and start being reasonable which also meant I needed to learn how to lean on people when I couldn’t complete a task or achieve a goal. I guess the old saying “it’s my way or the highway” was something I had to let go of and understand that the meaning of that phrase is very one sided and to be a reasonable adult I needed to allow myself to see the whole picture and accept things from both sides of the spectrum.
Putting the logical part of my life with the reasonable part of my life together I seemed to form this need to be well organized. Thinking back to my teenage years I had a room that looked like a bomb went off and I was lucky if I could find anything under the rubble. It all clicked when I started college in the sense that suddenly I was hyper organized. My room was spotless and had to be in order for me to focus, my binders were neat and I knew when things were due and I started keeping a schedule. I never realized I could have gone from being so unorganized to needing to be overly organized which has now also turned into my downfall (perfectionist side). I am not upset that I am so organized now and love that people turn to me and rely on me because I do have things so well put together but I wish I hadn’t taken it to the extreme.
I would have to say that I am always a work in progress and will be forever changing. If the events in my life had not taken place I don’t think I would be where I am today. Many forks in the road got me to be so logical, reasonable and well organized; those forks also got me into higher education and the love of teaching and helping people. If you had asked me in high school would I be in the education sector I would have told you no way, I would be a high power business woman. I think every event in someone’s life changes them whether they realize it then or 5 years from that moment. I still look back and can see moments where my life changed and I didn’t know it then and I wouldn’t change it now.
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