By Lucas Würstlin

Marley headphones wedged in, SoundCloud set, music bouncing into my ears, ready to throw in the towel before science class even began. This was my daily routine as I walked into my grade ten science classes. Besides the occasional first twenty minutes of optimism, I really didn’t like this class. As soon as I heard the teacher say something I didn’t know or understand (this was more than occasional), I would put my head to the desk and, quite frankly, I would give up. My grades were on the verge of plummeting in science and things weren’t looking good. I don’t remember how things changed, but things did change. Baby Jesus did not drift into my room from the heavens one night, and I didn’t get struck by a thunderbolt, but something did change. I started to care. I started to put in work. I started to actually study for more than twenty minutes to just play 2k. I started asking questions in class. I started to work hard, and it paid off. Yea Yea, it’s corny, but I honestly do believe that hard work pays off. The real ones grind.

It’s easy to hear and say hard work pays off, but the actual nitty gritty of working diligently to hopefully be rewarded is the true task. Especially if you’re doing something you’re not quite fond of. For me, I wasn’t quite fond of my grade ten science classes. This made the task to not abandon my work seem pointless. But by learning and establishing a rhythm of hard work on something you may hate, taking that deep breath without rushing yourself, and taping the moon mode on your phone, with snacks ready, allows you to apply that work ethic to something you do love. Then again, the harder you work, the better the reward, right? 

So there I was, actually studying, trying, and asking questions with a test on the somewhat cloudy horizon. A week later my teacher hands the graphite loaded package of paper back to me, and . . . nothing changed. I still got that greasy mark below 60%. I thought to myself, “What the hell?! What’s the point?” And this is where the classic lesson stands heroically on the top of the perfectly trimmed grass hill with a flaring red cape: don’t give up when you fail. Collapsing when you don’t get the outcome you expected is probably one of the easiest things to do in life. If you expect immediate benefits, you will fall into a deep dark hole, and let me tell you, it’s no fun in that hole. But surprisingly, once you get the hang of a proper work ethic, it’s not that difficult to continue to grind after failure, shaking hands with the same heroic lesson wearing a red cape.

Naturally, when you find yourself regularly slumping your head to the desk with a dazed look in your shutting eyes, you ask the teacher for help. Should be simple enough, but for some reason for me, it wasn’t. I wouldn’t even bother asking for help. If I didn’t understand whatever I was doing, I would just think it was stupid, and I wouldn’t even care. I took the easy way out. But the easy way out doesn’t get you where you want to go. You remember that lesson wearing a red cape and only his underwear from awhile  ago? Ya him. Well, he has a sidekick lesson (great lesson by the way). He stands heroically on a hill as well: don’t be afraid to ask for help. I’m not saying that you may be shaking in a ball full of perpetual fear to ask for help. I’m saying that if for some reason (I didn’t know my reason), you feel like something is stupid because you don’t have a grasp of it, just try and ask for help. Why not? What real reason is there for not asking? It can only benefit you. Seriously, how can it affect you negatively, beyond possibly getting the reaction of some waste man who thinks you’re dumb for asking? 

Bruce Lee once said: “Don’t pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” Amen, am I right? But seriously, brushing off whatever you may battle with, without putting up a fight, weakens your ability to endure the hardships of life. Some matters may be much lighter than others, but generally, constantly giving up will create a lack of whatever it is that keeps you going. I know I sound like I should be writing this in my final years, as I’ve lived through it all. Really, I’m only a sixteen-year-old kid. But, from what I’ve lived so far, my grasp on perseverance I built through my struggles in my science classes has brought me a long way. Although I dropped science last year, I’ve been able to apply what I have learned to practically everything. I can now tie my own red cape on, but I still haven’t been able to find a perfectly trimmed grass hill. But even without that hill, I still believe that hard work pays off.