final countdown (of dubious significance)

Gather 'round, story time.

Dig if you will, the picture: an upper-level college math course final exam awaited me to close out my semester. And lemme tell you, dear reader, it did not look good. I scored horribly on ALL previous tests -- so to pass (the class), I needed an uncommonly sterling grade on this final! Cumulative exam, of course. And yes, graduating depended upon this class.

Desperate times require desperate valor and measures. It was 'hook or crook' time.

I knew I had to dig out of a sizable hole. So in the weeks leading up, I visited that professor's office hours every day (I visited her office more in those few weeks than I had visited, in college, all other professors combined! ... in retrospect, this explains a lot). I had equations to practice, and questions to ask ... and re-ask. Surely, the professor glimpsed the desperation behind my eyes and in my new routine of dropping in on the regular. For some of these visits, she'd find me waiting outside her office for her when she arrived.

My struggle consumed these few weeks. Also on my mind was packing up my space to graduate ... landing a new job in a new city ... closing out a semester. 

On exam day, my heartbeat thudded in my ears. I made sure to get decent sleep, woke up early enough to have coffee and a decent breakfast. My calculator, a few sharpened pencils, and ample scratch paper filled my backpack. I harbored no illusions that 'doing my best' would look objectively stellar. It would be a struggle. My aim was to get myself to 'good enough' (to never have to do it again).

Daydreaming as a child, the sports I imagined playing professionally were baseball, or tennis ... but never football. Yet on that slow walk to take the final that spring morning, I visualized it like marching toward a gridiron game. This gridiron game, in particular, would test my mouthguard with the hits and tackles I'd absorb.

This exam would never, ever end up on Mom & Dad's refrigerator for display. My private, titanic, epic, galaxy-altering, soul-shaping battle of infinite proportions would never make mention in any history book worth reading. No cap. But toward the field I marched -- girded, hoping to vanquish, hoping to work the test as hard as the test was gonna work me.

Completing the test itself seemed like an oddly serene blur. I remember feeling a barely discernible level of spooked confidence. I also tried to keep from making careless mistakes by working too fast. Tried to take my time. Tried to remember the equations that'd dominated my life -- and dreams -- these past few weeks. I made sure to show my work. I turned in my test with a deep sigh, walked out, and in a daze, I wandered around campus.

Could it be all over? 

I walked back to my apartment. I waited. I prayed. And paced the floor. And waited some more. And prayed some more. I wanted to nap, but my nerves felt too jangled and frayed to attempt this.

A few hours later, an email arrived from the professor:

On this final exam, I'd scored a solid B.

Praise the Lord for how much data the short-term memory can retain! This exam grade brought my total grade up to (barely) passing the course.

                                         

Wow, I did it. 

Did my GPA take a hit? YES.

Did I care? NOT REALLY. 

I got it done. It was behind me. 

And to this day, not a single job I've ever interviewed for has asked me about that atrocious grade on my college transcript. That exam got the best I could give, which was (barely) good enough.

Point being: your best efforts (and my best efforts) will usually not be as swell as someone else's best efforts. Maybe you won't have an ideal amount of time to prepare. Maybe you won't have a natural talent for what you're doing, so nothing comes easy. Maybe your to-do list will look like a giant drug  store receipt, so you can't give all the attention you'd prefer to it.

Some stuff just needs to get done.

Some stuff needs to get done so we can move on to working on the stuff that's a higher priority to us. That's not sexy. It's an utterly pragmatic approach to life, but that's how it goes. Godly wisdom recognizes that we are finite creatures, created to need sleep, to function best on healthy food and adequate water intake. And that some stuff is more important to us than other stuff.

If you haven't learned by now, college is where a lot of us learn this universal truth: you cannot excel at everything. Sometimes just moving past (and through) something is enough. We gotta gird up, and epically fight the battle, that final countdown of dubious significance.

May the odds favor you.

And if the odds do not favor you with the battle you face, may you glean the wisdom to figure out how to tilt the odds to favor you.

Hook or crook.