Failing Calculus, New Year, New Resolutions

When I left for the University of Iowa at the age of 17, I was going to be a badass biomedical engineer.  I was going to design artificial limbs for amputees.  My limbs were going to be the most badass thing the world of prosthetics had ever seen. I am talking straight out of a robotic science fiction movie.  That is, until I hit calculus II my second semester.  I would find myself in a desk on campus with a TA who was from another country with a foreign accent I struggled to understand.  The board looked like some sort of hieroglyphics I would never comprehend.  Week after week.  I would sit there with no freaking clue how to deal with this. His office hours were not helpful as his accent was too thick. There was no internet.  No tutorials to look at.  Just sixteen weeks of feeling like I had been dropped in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language until I finally just simply quit going to class and would ultimately received a call after the semester ended, from my parents that I had failed the class.  My first F in life.

When I look back at that period of time I can't help but compare it to my four decades of attempts at weight loss and good health.  Entering the process so many times convinced I could be some sort of badass  fit athlete straight out of the pages of the Sports Illustrated.  I would launch myself into the latest and greatest commercial diet, overdo the exercise until I hurt and really end up feeling a little less Sports Illustrated and more lost in the pages of some sort of foreign language magazine where the characters made no sense.  I would hurt.  I would be hungry.  I would be mystified that a period of time had passed and I was at a plateau and the quick fix I had convinced myself existed was really more smoke and mirrors.  The period that followed this always proved to be a time of complacency and resignation to the notion that I probably could never reach my goals.  With New Years approaching I am wondering how many others will do just this as 2018 gets rolling. 

Well, right before I failed calculus, I had interviewed for a summer internship with a biomedical engineer.  I found myself entering the hospital where his office was and was impressed by the beautiful lobby.  Shiny chrome and glass, marble accents, yes, I could work here.  Let the badass limb designing begin.  Then, I was led to his office.  Beyond the lobby, descending to the basement, hospital green painted cement walls, past the morgue, into a windowless room that was little more than a broom closet.  Here it was.  Design central.  Somehow this lacked the glamour of the Hollywood sci fi I had built up in my mind.  There were no people here.  There was a tired looking guy at his computer who was excited about all the computerized plans he showed me.  Yeah, those were cool, but I am a social person by nature.  I would never see these limbs in action.  I would be in a hole somewhere lost in measuring angles and weight loads and yes using the calculus I had no freaking understanding of. 

So, after getting over the crushing blow of my first F, I changed trajectory. I would essentially scrap my entire first year of college and start again.  This time in nursing.  Financially speaking, this was an extremely difficult time for me.  Scrimping, saving, working and essentially taking school loans from anyone willing to give me the money to go.  I would have to take a semester off when the money rant out mid way through my program and work nights for months in the hospital to get back in.  In all, undergrad would take me six years with the last one being paid for by The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.  The only stipulation for them, was I would go work for them after graduation.  I would go on to graduate, and work on the pediatric floor and be the clinic nurse in the pediatric amputee clinic.  Here, I found myself watching four month old babies being fit with their first prosthetic arms so they could learn how to sit and later crawl.  I would watch kids with traumatic amputations learn to walk again.  You never know how badass first steps are until you get to watch it first hand.  The look of surprise on a child's face when they are finally upright again after months of being down.  The hope in the parents' eyes when they realize their limb deficient born child could be just like everyone else.  It was these moments I was so grateful to have failed calculus and have the chance to have a front row seat to this rather than being in the dark basement in front of a computer screen.

So, maybe the answer this New Years is to change trajectory.   We need to get over the fear of the amount of time it will take to reach our goals, be wary of the quick fix, not be afraid of starting all over again, and most importantly set our sites on things we have never done before, because what lives on the other side of that is a greatness that cannot be described, only experienced.  My goals this year are to complete the Spartan Trifecta as I did in 2017, but this year take new people with me and enjoy my front row seat to their first steps at being completely out of their comfort zones, as this is clearly a soul feeding experience for me.  I also have committed to a crazy 200 mile 12 man relay race known as Ragnar which completely terrifies me.  However, I know that I will learn something all new at the finish line and those around me will get to witness my own reaction to reaching goals I never thought possible.  As always, I am quite certain that the best is yet to come in 2018.