Working my way up

Morgan Rooney
MSMU Class of 2020

(9/2019) Each year, as the coming semester approaches, I get a surge of excitement thinking about returning to the Mount and reuniting with friends. I think about the good memories to come. I am eager to see my new courses, schedule, and living situation which has been very different each year I have spent in college. The one thing that I always seem to forget about until it hits me in the face is the workload. Some years aren’t so bad, and some are more challenging.

Like many other college students, I have spent long nights consuming more caffeine than is healthy for my body to stay up and tackle that final paper that had been weighing me down for weeks. I have been guilty of accidentally procrastinating assignments to a later time, causing me more stress than was necessary to complete that assignment. I have spent hours of preparation for performances which made my fingers feel raw and sore from pressing down on those metal strings repetitively until I believed I had gotten the music down. I have spent time upset that I am not with certain people who are not on this campus but I have an obligation to myself to graduate and walk across the stage in the spring.

As much as these moments have been long and draining on not just my mind, but my body, I would not change anything. When I finally accomplish the task, I was set out to do, it was rewarding. It feels like that time over the summer when I decided to take my bike out. It wasn’t going to be a long ride, just enough to get my energy out and give myself a challenge as I’m not as athletic as I wish I was. My plan was to go eleven miles with some short breaks for water along the way. When I was closing in at the end, I had my final and most difficult challenge. I needed to ride up the hill that ran alongside the golf course before the path reached into the neighborhood again. Halfway through, I questioned if I should keep pedaling or stop, as I had already worked so hard and "deserved a break." I kept going, afraid to face the disappointment I would have for myself knowing that I was about to climb the hill previously, and knowing that each day, I grew weaker. When I reached the top, I was relieved and filled with pride, with the exception of my rapid breaths that refused to slow down, even during my short water break.

Even though I know many others can do much better, I was even more proud than the previous times I had gone up that hill, as it required even more work than it had been a few years ago, when I was likely in slightly better shape than I am now. The more work I spent on it, and the more time and effort it took, the more rewarding the experience was.

Some people can do the same things as I can in half the time. This could apply to running, writing a paper, or learning a language. I had a friend in high school who took the same French classes as me and I felt like she truly picked up the language very quickly when I still felt like a beginner with the equivalent comprehension of a young toddler. The different that we had was that she didn’t care as much about learning French. It came easy to her and she didn’t appreciate it in the same way as I did despite her straight A’s in the course. She had no trouble dropping out of the course our senior year to pursue something she had more interest in. I continued to take French though high school, and now in college. I am going to walk across the stage in May and receive my degree in French and Communication. There is nothing wrong with her not wanting to do French. There are things that hold our interest and things that we are not so passionate about. My point is that even though she was really good at learning French and didn’t need to put as much effort into it, she didn’t have a passion for it like I did. I loved it and want to continue to pursue it. I even spent a month there to study in the summer of 2018. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had and I would do it again in a heartbeat!

Hard work is something I truly admire. I am fairly certain I will never continue school all the way to get a PhD, and I knew this going in the college. When considering what I wanted to study, I kept in mind that I didn’t want to spend the next decade of my life in school, falling deeper and deeper into debt and go to elaborate lengths to complete medical school like some of the people I went to high school with. I knew that I didn’t want to go directly into graduate school after I finish my studies as an undergraduate. I may continue one day, but I knew that I wouldn’t feel ready yet. Although I tried to keep these realistic expectations of myself when making my decisions about higher education, I have a newfound respect for the people I know who did go to medical school, or directly into graduate school and eventually getting their PhD. I respect those many years of hard work, sleepless nights, and overwhelming stress.

The value of hard work is something that cannot be replaced by anything monetary. It’s a quality that I hope grows within myself and that I love to see around me. Most of all, it is something that I can use to positively influence the people around me. With a little bit of luck and help from the people around me, and always working hard, I am confident that I will be happy with where I end up after I graduate, and I look forward to the beginning of the rest of my life.

Read other articles by Morgan Rooney