Strive

Note: This is dedicated to everyone who is finding out for sure where they are going for school. And especially my sister Kiana, who has never been to a math camp.

A few weeks into my freshman year, I attended a dinner for scholarship recipients. As I walked in, I saw a few familiar faces, but I still felt very out of place and awkward. What was I doing here? What were we all going to talk about during dinner?

The answer? AP classes. I could get down with that. It was the most boring conversation topic in the world, but it was fairly innocuous. Then a bag of candy was passed around, and we were all supposed to take some. Well, I like candy, so I took a bunch. Then they announced that we weren't supposed to eat it, and that for each piece we took we had to say something about ourselves. I froze in horror. I had like twenty jelly beans.

Most everyone had four or five jelly beans, and they quickly got through their introductions. The smart ones who also grabbed a lot just hurried and gobbled up their candy so they only had to say four or five things about themselves too. I wasn't that quick on my feet, so I had to reach far into my life to find things to say that were the right amount of impressive, same as everyone before me. By the end it was a stretch. It was pretty horrible for everyone involved, I imagine.

Finally that whole jelly bean thing was done and they talked about other things. "We've studied it over the years, and 6% of Presidential Scholars end up marrying each other." Suddenly we all started looking each other over, trying to gauge what our potential future spouses might look like. After my jelly bean debacle, I felt pretty safe from that fate, at least among this group.

The final activity of the night was making mission statements. "I have a suggestion," I said to my small group. "Can we not use the word 'strive?'" They looked at me like I had suggested drowning a kitten. "I feel like I hear that word a lot and I'm kind of tired of it." It seemed to be a buzzword among all the freshman orientation-type people -- "Strive to achieve greatness. Strive to help the community. Strive to live the Young Women values." I was just plain sick of it.

 "Well, it's a good word," was their response, and the resulting mission statement used the word about four times. I felt like I had stuck my foot in my mouth enough so I didn't protest any further. At the end of the evening, I felt a huge sense of relief that it was finally over.

. . . Interestingly enough, I did end up marrying another Presidential Scholar (not the same year, so I don't know if that counts toward the 6%). I also eventually had conversations with some of these people that never even touched on AP classes or jelly beans.

And I still don't like the word strive.