EPTSo last week my blog entries were about how I basically kill myself to get shit done, and then get lucky, and then kill myself some more, and then get even more success out of it. Well, this shit just KEEPS HAPPENING. And I'm going to share with you a reason why.
First of all, like my last two weekends, yesterday and today have been absolutely groundbreaking days. Yesterday I had a report due at 5pm. It was already mostly done, but I still spent the whole day finishing it off. Got that one printed and submitted in the nick of time, which meant that I could go home and write my other report.
This thing turned out to be a monster. All tolled I finished it off at 9000 words by 3am. I can't take all the credit though: it was a 4-man project that 3 of us did a ton of work for. The other guy was busy preparing notes for our exam in the morning. Did I mention I had an exam at 9am?
In lieu of studying I opted for sleep. I slept through an exam last week, so this time I made sure I had two alarms and two wake-up calls. I didn't even really print off any notes for it and you were allowed open laptop notes if you had them.
I think I got perfect. :D
So what is the lesson from all this? No, it's not that you can rape engineering course exams without studying; quite the opposite. Were this any other course (except my history course) I most definitely would have been staring at an empty exam booklet for 2.5 hours.
What I take from everything I've done in the past couple weeks and the past 6 years of my life is that no matter what you do you should always keep moving towards your goal - everything else is secondary. I've given up sleep, time, social life, and my girlfriend, all for this one goal. Despite struggling in getting there, I'm finally almost at a point where I can be confident that I will make it (the 95% in this doesn't hurt).
Two things keep me going: #1 is a Russian man yelling at me, and #2 is my father.
- The Russian I'm referring to is Nikolai Borschevsky, a former Toronto Maple Leaf whose hockey school I used to go to in the summer (he's now a KHL coach I think). The school was particularly tough (8 hours of hockey + 1 hour of dryland per day), but during the drills there was no giving up. Nikolai would yell at you to, "keep going, keep going, keep going! That's it; move it! Harder!" In everything I do I just imagine him yelling at me. There is no stopping; to stop is to fail. No matter what happens you just don't stop and keep going.
- My father inherited the family business from my great-grandfather in 1980, when he was 22 years old. Since then he's never had another boss other than himself, and he absolutely kills himself for our family. He pulls all-nighters constantly, and generally always lacks sleep, because he does so much. It's not just work either - family stuff even takes precedence over sleep. I see that and realize that he does that so I can have this opportunity to be so much more. Why would I give up when it's not just me devoted to my own cause?
There is still much for me to do; it is sometimes daunting. But there is no plan B other than to succeed, so I just won't stop. I'll give up when I'm dead, so for now I think I'll keep going.
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Keep going. Harder.
