Stepping Up and Taking Responsibility (but not too much responsibility)

It’s been yet another crazy week for me. This week I had several papers and projects due, I worked extra hours in the costume shop to get the Theater Company’s show ready to open, and it was also the week that Student Organization renewal forms were due. In addition, I’m busy preparing for a presentation that I’m going to give to the board of a non-profit about the social media audit that I conducted for them. These things always seem to pop up at the same time.

There were several times this week when I brushed up against the threshold of an adulthood fail. It was tempting to give in and go to bed rather than stay up until 5:00am finishing a 6-10 page paper. It was also tempting to give in and stop trying so hard to finish and turn in all the paperwork associated with renewing the student organization that I help lead. It was really tempting to just let go and watch everything collapse in on itself and revel in my immaturity. But I didn’t. I suffered through and held on, and I made it to the end of the week alive. Albeit severely sleep deprived, stressed out, and a bit crabby, but alive nonetheless, and with everything still intact too.

Even though plenty of people choose to shirk responsibility in favor of doing something more enjoyable, I think part of being a successful adult is digging into all that stressful stuff and working through it for the sake of others or for the sake of a better future.  I didn’t want to stay up all night working on a paper, but I knew that a good GPA lets me keep my scholarships and gives me more internship opportunities in the future. I didn’t want to figure out all the paperwork for my student org, but I realized that the networking and portfolio-building opportunities that my organization provides might be the difference between whether or not I land a job once I graduate, and I know that those opportunities benefit the other members as well. As a result, I push through the stressful times and end up with brighter opportunities and less stress in the future.

But at the same time, a big part of this adult responsibility is learning to let some things go. You can’t be the hero to everyone, all the time. When you try to do everything at once, you easily become overbooked, exhausted and burnt out. You have to make good choices about what you want to put work into, and you have to realize that you can’t carry another person’s weight for them. It’s just too much for you to handle on your own. This is something I need to work on. You can’t do everything for everyone else. If things are going to fall apart, then they will fall apart eventually, no matter how much effort you put into trying to save them. Yeah, it’s really disappointing when they do, but you can’t burn yourself out by trying to bail out the Titanic with a one-gallon bucket.

Moral of the story: hard work is good, and it pays off, but only if you’re smart about what you invest your work in.