Author: Sarah Mitroff

Underachieving; The Newest Trend?

Since when is it cool to act stupid? When did it become admirable to be lazy and blow off 90 something percent of your college classwork?

So I have my gripes with San Francisco State, that is nothing new. But what has shocked me as of late is how people in my classes brag about the fact that they didn’t do an assignment, failed a test, or don’t pay attention in the class.

Since when is that worth bragging about? Really? Its cool that you don’t do anything in your classes and you barely pass, if you do at all? I just don’t get it.

Don’t get my wrong; I am not an obsessive, overachieving, perfect student who never makes mistakes. I try my best to do well in all my classes and maintain a good GPA. But I also have learned to pick my battles with classes and that some classes can’t be aced. But I do not brag about how I failed a test, am too stupid to know what projects are assigned in class or that I don’t pay attention during lecture.

I don’t see how people think this makes them look cool. It will definitely won’t look cool when you leave college and have a job. Just imagine, bragging to your coworkers about how you never pay attention in meetings, that you didn’t do half of your assigned work or that you constantly skip out of work early to hit happy hour. That won’t make you look cool to your coworkers: that’ll make you look like a loser who doesn’t pull their weight. That will also never get you promoted.

If nothing else, college teaches us how to meet deadlines, pay attention, and be responsible. So if you half-ass learning these skills in college, you will just have to learn them in the working world. That is if an employer is willing to keep you around long enough for you to get the chance to learn them.

I know I am ranting, and for this I ask your apologies. I just can’t believe that in every one of my classes I can hear someone bragging about not doing their work as if it makes them look so cool.

OK, I have ranted long enough. Thanks for your patience my lovely reader, whomever you may be 🙂

I promise to be more positive in my future posts; ranting  doesn’t really do a whole lot of good.

Blessings in Disguise

Perhaps one of my favorite quotes is “God never gives you more than you can handle”. I am not a deeply religious person, in fact I am hardly “religious” at all. I have my own version of spiritually and my own relationship with God that exists beyond the parameters of any one religion.

OK, enough religion talk; it always makes me uneasy.

Today my favorite quote came to me over and over again. Things didn’t exactly go my way today and I was feeling unhappy. I had been given the gift of time when I didn’t exactly want it.

The more I thought about my situation, the more I realized that whether I wanted it or not, I needed this gift of time. As any busy college student will tell you, when homework rains; it pours. Most students typically get assigned a ton of projects, papers and exams that all are due around the same time.

I am no exception. This month is filled to the brim with term papers, exams, a 20 page research paper, and a 10 minute speech. This is the best possible time for me to get the gift of time; to be able to finish all my assignments without having to cram the work into 3 days per week.

I may not be completely happy with my new found gift of time, but I have little control over it. In fact, I have little control over a lot of things. The sooner I come to terms with that the better. The only thing I can control is how I feel about situations that come my way and try to see the positive in everything.

“God never gives you more than you can handle”. I realized that what happened was God’s way of not giving more than I can handle. And that truly is a blessing.

Misguided School Pride

There has been a trend that I have observed around San Francisco State. Lots of people proudly wearing sweatshirts representing their school pride. The problem is, its pride for other schools.

I don’t really understand this. I mean these people obviously attend San Francisco State University and judging by our transfer rate, they aren’t likely leaving anytime soon. So why wear a sweatshirt with UCLA, SDSU, or Berkeley emblazoned on it? Are you hoping that you are going to get to that school someday?

I almost feel like the words “wish I went to” or “didn’t get accepted to” should be on the sweatshirt above the school acronym.

I get that SFSU is not the most spirited school; a large majority of the student body commutes to school, spending little time there. We don’t have a large sports department to get excited about, and we are certainly not an Ivy League school. But still! Come on SF State students, have a little pride in where you are getting your degree from. You obviously chose to go to this school, for one reason or another. I know that our library is under construction, and sometimes our faculty is sub par, but we could be so much worse.

So to all you people who walk around with other school’s sweatshirts, I hope you realize how foolish you look. For everyone who wears their SFSU sweatshirt with pride, good for you.

Last Page First

I have a strange little quirk about me: in the past (and sometimes in the present) I’ve read the last page of a book first. Most people would say that this ruins the book because I find out, or can figure out, how the story ends. I never really saw a problem with this practice and never really knew why I had the desire to do it.

Recently, I’ve been reading the novel Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I didn’t read the last page first but I did read the last page about half way through the book. It was the first time I felt like reading ahead had ruined a book. I was bummed to find out the ending to the story. But then, I realized that even though I knew the ending, I still wanted to read the rest of the story. I wasn’t going to stop reading the book just because I knew what was going to happen, I wanted to know how it happened.

This seemed like a metaphor for life as well. We all know how our story will end; one day we will pass away. But that doesn’t stop us from living our lives. We all still want to know the story of the journey.

I don’t really still read the last page of a book anymore; this is more of a quirk from my youth. But I realize that this quirk isn’t all that bad. I feel that our society is so goal driven that we loose sight of journey it takes to get to our goals. We could all use a reminder now and then that our journey is as important, or even more important, than the end result.