Don’t leave yourself wondering!

When I was at High School I was one of those kids who wasn’t particularly great at most things, but not awful either.

Back then, in forms 4 and 5 you had choose a stream of learning: General, Art, Business, Trade, or Applied Science. I had undertaken Applied Science in Form 4 and only just scraped through, so a big decision had to be made, should I drop back to General or perhaps Business or have a go at Applied Science once again.

I struggled on for a while searching for the right fit and finally approached my very understanding science teacher, Mr Griffin ,who spelled it out something like this: (it was a LONG time ago, so some details are a bit fuzzy) Why not have a go at Applied Science, what have you got to lose? If you don’t succeed you can either try again or try a different stream – if you don’t have a go, you’ll always be wondering if you could have done it and that would be much worse than trying and failing.

I did undertake Applied Science once again and passed by the bare minimum, with  lots of help from my clever fellow students and with  I suspect, a little help from a couple of my teachers. Now this story doesn’t end with me becoming a rocket scientist or even a qualified anything, I went straight into an admin position and wished I had learned shorthand instead of calculus! However, I wasn’t left wondering.

So thanks Mr Griffin, I haven’t always been courageous with my decisions, but you quite often pop into my head to remind me to at least “have a go”