Daily Choices That Court Disaster

Through the midpoint of my freshman year in high school, I remember very few report cards that so much as a C - and I don’t think I ever got anything lower. While I never did a ton of studying, I did carry books home as needed and completed homework assignments. When the second semester of my freshman year began, that ended. Although there may have been times where a textbook left school property in my possession, I can’t point to any substantial amount of time it received. What I do have a fairly clear recollection of is all the extracurricular activities (work and shenanigans) I engaged in after school and on the weekends. 

Working whenever and wherever I could minimized the time I had to engage in nonsense. Keeping a relatively low profile during said nonsense (and thank God for being raised with a “spare the rod, spoil the child” approach) helped me avoid getting into any significant trouble; fear can be a powerful motivator when good decisions are few and far between. Rather than A’s and B’s, most of my grades fell to B’s and C’s with an occasional D - something that never happened previously. Math always came easy, so that was consistently an A+, which helped keep my GPA respectable. English and Science required me to actually pay attention and called for study time beyond the classroom; I wasn’t interested in either and I refused to take part but managed to scrape by through my sophomore year.

I worked full time the summer between my sophomore and junior years. That, coincidentally, was the first summer I had a driver’s license and vehicle of my own. To say that summer was a whirlwind would be quite the understatement. As I mentioned before, I couldn’t work with the construction crew during the school year since they wrapped up their day shortly after I got out of class, so I got a job at the local grocery store. I was bagging groceries and pushing shopping carts initially, but I jumped at any chance they offered to learn other tasks. During the fall of my junior year, I averaged twenty or so hours on the job each week. I was new, I still attended an occasional high school football or basketball game, and I enjoyed hunting (or at least the social aspects of the hunting camp experience), so that was enough.

By January 1993, going into the spring semester of my junior year, I had grown far less interested in anything to do with school and was picking up all the hours I was allowed to work in the grocery store. I was even more engaged in shenanigans, which meant I had little time left for anything remotely tied to school work. Leading up to that point, I did really well when I was physically in the classroom and that offset my utter refusal to do homework. Attending school from 8a to 3p, working from 4p to 10p three to four evenings a week and pulling shifts on the weekends, all while participating in as much nonsense as I could find left little time for sleep. I soon learned that my English and Chemistry classes were best suited for snagging a daily nap.

While I didn’t catch much flack from my teachers daily, I recall distinct conversations with each near the end of my junior year where I was presented with ultimatums. My English teacher explained that I would need to get an A on the final exam to pass for the year. And since it was a required class, failing would mean summer school. My Chemistry teacher was a wonderful lady but less positive in the message she shared. She said that I had a very slim chance of getting a D for the year but asked me not to repeat the class as a senior if I didn’t pass. Since that was not a required class, I assured her that she had nothing to worry about. Somehow, I managed a D. I still wonder if I really earned it or if that was her way of making sure one year of me was all she’d ever have to endure. As for English, I aced the final. 100%!!! The teacher wasn’t amused; not because I did so well, but because I gave the class no effort whatsoever leading up to that point when I was clearly capable.

As high school turned from mediocrity to near-disaster (at least as it related to pass/fail, which I had never experienced before), all because of poor daily choices. The real bad situation wasn’t the external chaos, that still looked like stability for the most part, but the internal failure to lead myself; failure to identify the smallest seeds and pull lessons in accountability from what could have easily been the brink of disaster. Learning from even this minor adversity early on could have redefined how I would have approached more significant struggles moving forward. And more certainly followed…

Here’s the thing: Cumulative small bad decisions create big bad situations, but they can also provide seeds of resilience if we’re willing to face them head-on. Next, we’ll look at the risks that come with knowing better but still choosing to do less. Until then, I want you to identify one “brink” moment from your past (or present) and write it down. What risky choice contributed to it and commit to one alternative action you can take the next time you face a similar situation.