How to Crush It, Even If You’re Starting from the Bottom
Here’s some advice that doesn’t ignore reality.
Some people think they get a whole weekend for their birthday. Take one of my students. She missed a paper deadline before skipping class Friday and Monday. Came back on Wednesday to ask me for an extension. Oh, and she wondered if I could forgive those absences.
“You don’t have to tell me exactly what’s wrong,” I said. “But give me something to work with here.”
Maybe her sister had a car accident. Or her dad was undergoing emergency brain surgery. Maybe her house burned down.
These things happen all the time.
She took a deep breath and said, “It was my birthday weekend.” Then she started talking about self care.
“If you don’t take care of yourself, then you can’t take care of anyone else.” Oh, how enlightening. The tone in her voice, combined with her facial expression, told me that she’d just learned this phrase.
This aphorism doesn’t exactly define what it means to take care of yourself. Clue — it’s probably not skipping class for birthday cake.
Still, I gave her a deadline extension. Not because I believed what she was saying. Back then, I was working as a grad student at the kind of…
