If little babies believed that giving up was an option when learning how to walk, we'd all be crawling around on our hands and knees.
Have you noticed, though, that babies NEVER give up? They try, fall down, cry, and get back up. They stand, make adjustments with how they balance their weight, how far to step forward, and so on. It's the getting back up and trying over and over again that makes it possible to walk. Babies don't give up just because they don't walk perfectly the first time they try. Or the second. Or the third. They just keep going until they get it right.
But a lot of us throw in the towel when things challenge us more than we expect they will. Some of us have the belief that if something doesn't come easy, it's not worth our time or energy to see it through to the end. How many unfinished projects do you have? How many times have you tried something new and immediately abandoned it when you discovered that you had to work at getting good at it? How many times have you thrown up your hands and given up because it just got too hard?
In the movie "A League of Their Own," Coach Jimmy Dugan (played by Tom Hanks) challenges his best player when she decides that she's quitting baseball because it would mean making some difficult personal sacrifices:
What I'm talking about is persistence. It's defined as "perseverence in spite of fatigue or frustration." It's sticking with something no matter how tired you are or how much you really want to quit. It's a personality trait successful people have that causes them to keep going with a task no matter what and not giving up.
Persistence is the ability to stick with something and see it all the way through. Think back to when you were learning how to ride a bike. When you fell down or lost your balance, you kept on going until you got the hang of it, right? That's persistence.
Pursuing a college degree is no different. There are courses and topics and skill sets to be learned that are designed to get you to the career you dream about. Some come easier than others. The harder tasks try your patience. You might even question whether you've chosen the right course...or career. The difference between success and failure is to not give up.
Just because something is difficult doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing it. College is supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard...is what makes college great.
