I attend this thing called Cru at Drexel. Not like crew (you know the rowing team), but Cru, a Christian group. We had a speaker named Shay from Temple. She’s a young pastor that worries about everything and hates "funeral" churches. I’m not really here to bash Shay by anyway. I grew up in church and I know every message isn’t for every person. There's something about hers that just didn’t sit right with me.
She started off by giving us her life accomplishments, you know GPA, schooling, activities, etc. Ok, I thought boatsful, but then she said how college and life train you to only talk about your best assets. She went on to say driving down to Drexel, within two blocks she saw 16 banners that had our famous slogan “Ambition can’t wait”. Her instant thought was, that’s a lot of pressure to put on kids.
Now, I don’t know why that’s Drexel slogan. The administration itself gets so ambitions, they can’t even accommodate the number of students they keep accepting. I often wonder who are they training to beat. Drexel needs to try and do a lot less. Honestly, who picked this slogan and how long as it been in effect?
Shay just went on to ‘preach’ about how college students are taught to “perform”. She went on to say all college students do is worry. I was sitting in a room where everyone agreed except for me. This left me thinking, is it bad that I don’t worry. Is it bad I went to a school that's beyond ambitious and that the students are too?
I sat there thinking. Sundays are always a relaxing day for me. I just sleep for hours, unless I have a church function to go to. Some boy said and Shay, it took them six months to learn how to relax and do nothing. They had to plan how to do nothing. Shay said, its only supposed to be one Sunday a month anyway.
I sat there thinking, why I don’t worry about midterms, and other random tests we get within our academic institutions. I just don’t, either you pass or fail and keep going on. I never worried about what college I was going to get into. I applied to twelve because I wanted to see who would take me. I made it fun and what happened, happened. I never worry about if my GPA is going to get me a job, the fact alone I have a degree will get me a job. Do you see where I am going?
I can go on about how she basically said all millennials do is worry, and I find that so funny because you hear most people say, millennials are just lazy. At the end of the day if you worry about things that won’t really shape who you are that’s a problem.
Shay said, “when I broke my arm I had to learn how to be myself. I didn’t know who Shay was.” She didn’t know how to be. She just didn’t know how to be because she was a planner, a performer, a millennial, most of all a worrier. Shay was the typical college student and that unsettled me. I now feel the need to worry just to be ambitious like my fellow students, because when you walk out a Drexel classroom after a bad day, you have to be reminded your “Ambition can’t wait,” so start to worry.
