Success or Pleasure?

I'll be honest, last Sunday night at around 6:30p.m. I had yet to start my 5-7 page paper that was due the next morning at 11:15. Crap. I knew at that moment that it was about to be the kind of night that every college kid likes to avoid - the all-nighter.

I settled in on the couch with my laptop and a snack and stared at a blank word document. Where to begin? Fifteen minutes passed as I sat there with the same blank stare and then my phone rang. It was my boyfriend, so as most girls do, I quickly reached to answer. He was calling to ask if I wanted to go down to the State Theatre to see the Banff Mountain Film Festival at 7:00. After a little bit of thought, I decided that I would go. I knew full well that this was asking for my all-nighter to be an allllllllllll-nighter. And boy, was I right. The film festival didn't even get out until about 10:30p.m. and THEN I had to buckle down and get to work.

Needless to say, I was exhausted getting up the next day.

Still, I regretted nothing. As I sat and debated whether or not I should go to the film festival, it all came down to one deciding factor that I think will apply to a lot of things for the rest of my life: my academics are absolutely important to me, but I wasn't going to let life experiences pass me by just to maintain an unrealistically high GPA. I would rather see the world (even if it is through independent films) than have my nose in a book all day and never see anything.

That's the double-edged sword of higher education and the work force isn't it? It's success... or pleasure... and rarely ever both.

Society has so convinced us that we're not successful enough or doing good enough if we haven't made the Dean's List or been a top-ranked employee or student. When did C become the new F-------? When did our worth become a quantifiable number, or letter at that?

Don't get me wrong... I'm equally guilty of getting upset over getting a B instead of an A, or that my GPA sat at 3.4 instead of the coveted 3.5 that would have my efforts acknowledged. Because let's face it, you could have a 3.49 and no one cares, but the second you hit that 3.5 mark you're on a whole new level of success.  The fact that I'm as guilty of these self-deprecations as the next student is why I can say this to everyone, and myself: it's not FAIR to be convinced that those types of grades determine what you're going to do with your life.

So, here's my take: society and my professors can keep whatever judgment they may have to themselves. Yes, individually, the workload from each class seems reasonable... but take each professor's reasonable and multiply it by 6 classes and you get a whole lot of unreasonable and a whole lot of not living.

And my advice? If you have the choice of seeing the world in a textbook or seeing a world in a film festival, a community event, a night out with your friends -- whatever makes you feel ALIVE -- pick that film festival. When you look back years from now, you'll remember the amazing images you saw, not the words you wrote on that paper.

Success is living life while you have the chance.

Here's the trailer for one of the videos from the film festival. They only showed an 11 minute clip of the one and a half hour video and I was so impressed I bought the full-length film on i-Tunes.