Living in the Margins

I've finally learned one of life's most valuable lessons this week. Do you wanna hear? This idea has been thrown my way numerous times throughout my life time, but I never grasped it fully. If you've ever been a part of an athletic team, band, or any type of group project I can almost guarantee that you've let the words pass through your ears without realizing the potential stored in the advice. Maybe it will take a firsthand encounter, as it did for me, for my message to deeply resonate with you. Regardless, I still need to share. So here goes: The separation of mediocrity and excellence is found in the margins of life.

I learned this from the least conspicuous person in my life, Dr. Rockley, my inorganic chemistry professor. Let me preface this post a little bit before I send this man great praise. Simply put: he is evil. Evil, Evil, Evil. You've heard me talk about the difficulty of my previous chemistry professor last semester, trust me he was difficult, but he pales in comparison. I remember my last professor, Dr. Raff, saying that there was only one professor in Oklahoma State's Chemistry department that was more difficult than he was. . . I'll let you take one wild guess who I got for Inorganic two. The class average on our first exam: 24%. His feet barely touched the ground as he cheerfully skipped into lecture the following day. He proceeded to work out a 24 minute long equation covering three chalk boards to prove to us that statistically if we all closed our eyes and randomly guessed on the exam our class average should have been in a range of 25-27 %. In other words, as a class we would have been more successful if we had all guessed without looking at one problem and turned it in. After the cricket in the ceiling broke the threatening silence of the lecture hall, my neighbor stood up in frustration, blurted out a few obscenities, and stomped out of the classroom never to be seen again. Dr. Rockley's response: A crooked smirk accompanied by a humorously delayed, "loser".

The class average on exam two: 33%. Don't let this persuade you the exam was easier that its predecessor. No. This is simply a correlation to all the people who dropped the course after the first exam. The chemical engineering majors are bloating our average up into the all time highs in a Dr. Rockley chemistry course. And no, I'm really not joking to make this a better story. Thankfully, I've scored much higher than the class averages on both exam one and exam two, but I still am not attaining my goal of an 'A' letter grade. It's one of the first times in my life that I've been faced with such a mental antagonizing situation. Keep in mind this is a five hour course. In other words, it weighs substantially on my GPA. If I want a realistic shot at getting accepted into medical school than it's vital I don't mess up this course. And Dr. Rockley is in the opposing corner seemingly throwing upper-hooks at my dream. My enemy, my nemeses. A 5'4", 67 year old, New Zealander is making me question the realism in my intelligence. All semester I've hated his guts. Not because he's a bad professor, he's actually done a phenomenal job at making chemistry relevant to the medical field. Not because he isn't helpful, his office is located in an unused class room so he can effectively help students after hour teaching hours. Not because of his sadistic sense of humor or really even his level of toughness; it all boils down to the fact that I want to be a doctor and Dr. Rockley is doing all he can to prevent my dream from coming to fruition.

Before you jump the gun and inform me that no professor purposefully tries to fail his students, let me tell you about our lecture before the third exam that I took last night. With a numb brain from 16 consecutive hours studying chemistry, I stumbled into my seat in the chemistry lecture hall. The chemical equilibriums in my body spazing from the overdose of energy supplements and under dose of sleep could not keep me from missing chemistry lecture in fear of falling into the deepest hole ever dug at a university. The lecture that awaited us was not expected. I expected to learn how to solve complex acid/base equilibrium problems under dynamic pressure systems. Maybe add in a little advanced chemical thermodynamics to spice it up a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't get to learn any chemistry that day (no sarcasm implied). What I got was one of my life's greatest epiphanies. Like usual, Dr. Rockley walked into lecture five minutes late and found his way to the podium where he started a very unusual lecture. Neither chalk nor 60 pound textbook was needed to convey his simple, yet meaningful plea to my comrades and I. (Yes, military vernacular is needed, we are at war with this man, remember?) More seriously, he began to explain the simple message that excellence is found in the margins of life. He told us the gap between an average doctor and an exceptional doctor is being aware of the small things. An average doctor might not pay attention to the hidden clue that would save a person's life, while an exceptional doctor living in the margins would pick up on the subtle clues. An average doctor might put in mediocre effort and sometimes find a great result, while an exceptional doctor always puts in great effort and sometimes receives mediocre results. People are typically defined by the end results of their lives, but their lives are made up of these marginal decisions they make every single day. He went on to tell us he goes through his exams and looks deeply into each problem and tries to find where we could possibly make a mistake. In chemistry, a simple charge being different can ultimately change the entire outcome of a problem by three orders of magnitude. He purposefully makes his tests tricky because, "The only people to pass [his] class will be the exceptional people who pay attention to the little details". He refuses to pass a student who he personally would not feel confident in allowing them to be his own doctor in a life threatening situation. I know my parents and friends see him as being unrealistically harsh, but really think about what he's saying. It might be the first time I've thought it all semester, but he's exactly right. I don't even want to be a doctor if I feel incapable of taking care of someone. I want to try my hardest now so that my patients can have confidence in my abilities. Great people are made in the marginal decisions in everyday life. We are called to pay attention to the little things. In the end, it defines what you will become. Dr. Rockley might give me a grade that will hurt my GPA, but he's the only professor in three years of being in Stillwater that will leave a permanent mark on my life. I want to be the best I possibly can be. And that requires living in the margins. Thank you Dr. Rockley. I'll leave you with this to capstone my message.

"Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily." -Johann Schiller

P.S. I got an A on exam three. Miracles do and can happen while livin' in the margins.

Summer Goal

Well I did it. I finished my most challenging semester in the last two years. I have to be honest and admit that in January I met this semester with great determination to work as hard as possible, but also with plenty of uncertainty. It was almost a test to see if I had enough intelligence to succeed in the pre-health track. After many sleepless nights and excruciating hours of studying, I'm glad to admit that I finished in the top 5% of my pre-medical classes. I've been forced to really lean on God this past year in so many areas of my life. I can't begin to tell you how many times this semester I've prayed, "Lord, I'm walking out your will in my life and you know that I've given my best. I couldn't have prepared better than this. I've done my best to do my part and I'm expecting to be met by you." I've begun to live this prayer out. It's been my semester's motto. If I'm doing my best than I can't be disappointed in the results. With the semester coming to an end, I've been given a month break before my summer classes resume. I finally get a little much needed breather. It seems that as I get older, time slowly has become my largest rival. I can never seem to schedule in enough "Stephen time" into my life. And trust me; I need it more than ever. I've been praying daily that God tell me what to do with my self-building time. Every time I've prayed I've gotten one answer: My heart.


I need to start preparing my heart to become the man I know I'm called to be. I need to get off my mountain and start my process of validation. In my short 20 years on earth, I've spent a majority of my life seeking my validation from others. I've been foolish enough to judge my heart's condition by how other's think of me. No longer will I seek my self-fulfillment through other's opinions. It's time I stop seeking others to validate me. If I want to be a man, a true man, I need to find myself in the Lord. Not in what others think. It might not be the same as studying for Chemistry five hours a day, but it will still stretch me in an area that I really need fixing and validation. I've let people close to my heart before, but it's time to let God closer than anyone. It's time to lean a little bit further. It's time to put a little more of my weight on God. I've learned to trust Him in so many areas this year and now I must learn to do it in a new area. I need to learn how to love correctly, but I must have my heart right before I can. That is my focus this summer. This is my goal. The process starts today. Thank you so much for all your prayers and support. I've been surrounded by the most incredible of people. Have a nice summer.

Final Stretch

Yep. It's finals again. I don't need a long, witty post to convince you of the overwhelming stress that comes along with this last week. I've got 5 exams next week and I've got to score about a 90% on all of them if I want an A in the class. Unfortunately, I'm really struggling to find motivation to start studying. I'm just not myself! I've spent hours watching baseball, playing Bejeweled 2, and looking up hilarious YouTube videos. On the eve of the most daunting finals week of my college career, I just can't seem to pull it together. I will get going though. Starting... now. Ok... now. Now?


By the way, If you don't see me on face book than it might be because I always remember how frustrating it is getting on and seeing how all my friends are finished with finals a week before me. I really don't want to hear how wonderful and relaxing your summer is back home when I'm busy studying the resonance structures of organic chemical compounds, effective nuclear charges of particular atoms, and deriving the quantum angular momentum of the various quantized orbital levels of an electron.

No I did not make those words up. I know I posted this video during my last "Finals" post, but I watch it every semester around finals:



See you on the flip side.

Peace.

Which Way Do I Go?

I have a great privilege this semester to have Dr. Lee Manzer as my marketing professor. I referred to him at the beginning of the semester as "Dr. Gpa" because he is the oldest tenured professor at Oklahoma State University. He is a unique professor. He isn't interested in monotone, dry lectures that put people to sleep. He doesn't use a PowerPoint slide show presentation with his notes. He doesn't sit in a chair to talk to us. Every day he tries his best to spice things up to make coming to class interesting. This is rare for an older professor at any university. Even with all these great attributes, he is most well known by his stories and quotes. Every class period he will tell interesting long stories that apply to what we cover in the book. He also takes any chance he can get to teach us "life lessons". Many of his stories include: "How easy it is to be great", "How to get people to commit to goals", So on and so on. It is interesting to me how many people I have spoken to, who have had Dr. Manzer as a professor in the past that remember the stories he tells. My older brother and sister-in-law also had him as a professor and they both remember stories that stuck with them through the entirety of their lives. Even the lady who interviewed me for a scholarship a couple of weeks ago told me a few stories she remembered. It's amazing how such a simple teaching philosophy has impacted the memory of so many college students. I was lucky enough to catch the last couple years of his teaching career. I would like to share one of his small "stories" with you: "The importance of goals".

If we don't have goals, than we can't expect to have any accomplishments in our lives. Aside from his story I found this fact very interesting, "The Yale graduating class of 1953 was surveyed to see how many had written goals. Only 3% had written goals. 30 years later, the same class was surveyed again. The same 3% had accumulated over 90% of the wealth of the entire graduating class". Dr. Manzer's story was based around Alice and Wonderland (yes this post is inspired by the premier of the movie tonight). I found a video clip that will save you plenty of reading time.





Do you notice that Alice gets to a fork in the road and does not know which way to turn? She does not know where she is going. She is lost in her circumstances and is just stumbling along mindlessly. She gets to the fork and asks the Cheshire cat a very important question, "Which way do I go?" The cat responds, "Which way do you want to go?"

"I do not know",

"Than it really does not matter which way you go".

If we have no aim in our lives, than it really does not matter which way we go... If we wonder around in our lives, simply clocking in and clocking out type of lifestyle, than we can't expect great accomplishments. "Shoot for the moon and you might end up in the stars". Even if I only hit the stars, that would be better than indecisively standing at the fork in my life on earth. I have taken the initiative to write out my long term and short term goals in my journal. Considering my task oriented lifestyle, this helps me see the current plan for my life. Another day and another story might be who your Cheshire cat might be. Who are you asking for direction or help?

Things to think about ladies and gentlemen. Don't be Alice and simply stumble around a hallucinogenic euphoria with no direction. Get a goal and start pursuing the finish line.

Goodbye 2009 School year!

For some reason I can't find the motivation to bust out a good, witty, or clever blog post about how I finished the semester. Maybe because I'm too busy on my "break" working 40 hours a week trying to get some cash! But here's a quick summary. Let's just say, considering my circumstances and the outside obstacles I faced, I had an incredibly successful semester. I was only 0.25 points from retaining my 4.0 GPA. Yes you read that right, a quarter of a point. In my upper level management class that I risked taking as a sophomore, I scored an 89.75%. I assumed it would be rounded up. My professors response, "Stephen, is an 89.75% below or above a 90%?"

Point taken. Jerk...