Lesson commands future success
Campus Times
April 16, 1999
One of the best lessons I have ever learned in school was in a class
I rarely attended.
It was during my senior year in high school, back before I was an adult.
My mom was a teacher at Monrovia High School (MHS), so it was fitting that
her son take her course to receive an 'A.'
Thinking I was just going to pad my grade point average without having
to attend, I never thought the lesson I would learn would run so deep in
my life.
My mom is a great teacher, and during my senior year, she was the best.
She is able to inspire the most apathetic of students and turn them into
contributing citizens of society.
One of the classes she taught, while she was at MHS, was along the same
lines as the Core 305 Service Learning course here at the University of
La Verne. It helped students find a purpose and make them realize that they
are important by tutoring elementary students.
And after being away from her work for the past three years, I now see
how much she and her lesson meant to her students, as seemingly each young
adult she reached comes back to tell her that he or she is continuing in
the field of teaching.
With every picture and new story that finds it way back to my mom, her
eyes light up with happiness. And her happiness makes me happy.
However, that is not the moral of the story. The real reason I bring
up her accomplishments is the lesson she taught in her class I sporadically
attended during 1996.
It was three simple words. A short list by which to live. Those three
words were the criteria for her final exam, and the correct answer was desire,
determination and dedication.
If her students knew this, they would pass the class. And since I knew
it, I earned my grade.
But I did not memorize these three words for just the sake of a grade.
They present an internal aura that commands success. They are almost magical
if one believes in them-almost as magical as pyramids, that is, if they
are magical and mystical at all.
Each meaning of the three words is different to each individual. For
me, to desire something is to try and obtain it by all means possible. It
is walking the face of the earth in order to grasp it. It is to focus on
a single goal, person or item with the belief it can be attained.
To have determination is to push until receiving the payoff. It is getting
up when the alarm clock goes off. It is realizing that all accomplishments
now will lead to greater achievements, positions and dollar signs in the
future.
And to have dedication is to continue the daily grind without thinking
about why it has to be done. As one wise man once told me, repetition is
the key. Or was it perfect practice makes perfect? In any case, to believe
in the words is what works.
These three things, I believe, are what fueled my mom's students. And
through their success, she is able to continue to shovel that knowledge
of the "three Ds," as she likes to call them, to future students.
Sometimes in life, situations, good or bad, dictate how I go about my
day. And that is not what I learned in that class. If I, and anyone else
for that matter, would just realize that the simple lesson of the "three
Ds" eases the mind, straightens the crooked road of life, makes the
light at the end of the tunnel shine a little brighter, my stories of success,
like those of my mom's students, would not only make my mom do backflips,
but they would also spread to everyone around me.
Not to get scientific, but the human mind is the best tool each of us
has. And to give it motivation with something like the "three Ds"
may be the missing piece each of us need.
I am not saying all results are guaranteed, I mean, this is not an infomercial
by any means. I also am not saying these words are like that lucky blue
dot in the Enquirer.
But what I am recommending is to try these three words. If they are
practiced to their meanings, the results might be scary. Who knows, one
might even receive an "A" like me.
Greg MacDonald, a junior journalism major, is editor in chief of
the Campus Times. He can be reached by e-mail at gmacdona@ulv.edu.
