Sept. 20, 2012

Today, I was at my internship when a fellow intern came in to talk to me. She wanted to vent about her trouble trying to graduate. Apparently, something was amiss with her schedule and she had to end up taking one more class in order to get her degree. The problem was she already had so much work to do this semester that she either had to cram the extra class into her already busy schedule or she had to take another semester of school. She was angry and conflicted and confused. "I really, really wanted to graduate in December," she told me. "And I told everyone, my friends and family, that I was graduating in December. Now if I tell them I'm graduating in May, they're going to ask, 'Why? What happened? What did you do?' But I have so much work to do and I don't know if I'm want to take on another class this semester." 

"I'm going to tell you three things," I told her. "First of all, life is going to throw you curveballs and sometimes, it's better to take them. You can't always mold life to you. Sometimes, you're going to have to mold to life. Second, take this as an opportunity. You already have so much to do this semester. One more semester isn't going to kill you, and graduation in May is lot better because more people will come out."

"True," she told me.

"Thirdly, you ever seen a horse race? In real life or on tv?"

She nodded. 

"You know how they put blinders on the horse so they can't see their competition? That way, they just run their race. Don't worry about what other people are going to say. Just run your race." ***

 Josephine nodded. "You're good," she told me.

"I hope so," I added. "I'm going to have to be someday."

 We ended having lunch together and working together the rest of the day. It was nice. 

When I was walking home from my internship, I passed by a restaurant that had one of those dry-erase boards where they wrote out their specials of the day. The board was propped up on the sidewalk and I did a double-take as I walked by. The board was advertising: "Flan with a shot of espresso." Interesting, I thought to myself. I should try that. Then I remembered that I hate both flan and espresso. Why would I want to try a combination of the two? Still, I thought about it the rest of the day and regretted not trying it. I'll try it next time, I promised myself. It was probably going to be one of those things where I think it's a great idea at first until I put the flan with espresso into my mouth and realized that it wasn't a great idea at all. We'll see. 

***The comment about the blinders and the horse race is not an original idea of mine. It came from the movie "Head of State". Just so you know. :)