Monday, April 16, 2018

What we have here is a failure to commiserate

Since owning up to failure is an important part of adulthood, I am willing to admit that I failed badly when I reached into the sock drawer this morning. I did not realize that the elastic on these knee-highs was just too tired to function on a dreary gray Monday, and hence I've spent half the morning pulling up my socks. (Note to self: at the end of the day, these knee-highs go straight into the trash.)

And I am willing to accept responsibility for agreeing to pay a vendor a certain amount of money for services related to All Scholars Day without first going through the proper College channels, but I quickly admitted my error, asked for help, and fixed the problem--and now I'll know how to do it next time I end up in this kind of situation.

But at the moment, that's as far as I'm going. Complain about the weather all you want; I refuse to accept responsibility for it. Whine about why you should get a special exemption from a deadline, but remember that your failure to meet the deadline is not the deadline's fault. Gripe about bad academic advising from now until next Tuesday, and I'll just point out that an advisee's refusal to take her advisor's good advice is not so much "failure of advising" as "failure of studenting."

I'll carry my quota of failure with as much dignity as I can muster, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to carry yours. So let's buck up and carry our failures forward side by side. (Wait a minute while I pull up my socks.)

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