Perseverance and Discipline in the Life of Student Assistant
Each one of us here wants to be successful someday but there’s no easy way or magic formula for success. It is easy to dream about success, but doing it is not. We need to struggle to the extent of pushing ourselves beyond our limits. But there are times that we will feel tired and lazy doing our tasks just like saying na “Ayy mamaya ko na yan gagawin, tinatamad pa ko”, “Tulog muna ako saglit”, “manonood muna ako”until we forget what we should do.But at the end of the day, there are only 2 things that ultimately push us from wishful thinking to actually achieving our dreams: Discipline and Perseverance.
College life is known as one of the most memorable years of one’s life. It exposes us to new experiences and things that we were not familiar with during our earlier school life. For some students, college life means enjoying life to the fullest and partying hard. While for others, it is time to get serious about their career and study thoroughly for a brighter future. College life experience is truly one of a kind. However, not everyone has a chance to go to college due various reasons. A study found that 38% of the students who didn’t enroll feared the cost of college and amassing debt while 26% believed that earning money from working is more important. Nonetheless, college life still remains a memorable time for most.
Being financially incapacitated maybe a problem to many but not for some. Other students who try to finance themselves by having a part time job to pay for college and some tend to apply as student assistants in different universities. Working while studying gives you a dissimilar perception of the institute experience. Varying from friends to classes and to jobs, all working students will comprehend how complicated it can get. It is a great concern for the students who are pursuing their education and earning at the same time. Challenges for working students are almost similar to being a student assistant. Other universities offer an opportunity for education in exchange for their service. Southville International Schools and Colleges is my primary example.
Being financially incapacitated have pushed us to apply as a scholar and student assistant here in Southville. As we work as both students and student assistants at the same time, we can state that it wasn’t exactly simple. We experience stress and laziness when we have to squeeze office and school work in between commitments, but as we work and study for longer periods of time and as we understand why we applied here in the first place, we tend to persevere and work our lives around these daily responsibilities. But what exactly is to persevere and how do we do it? To persevere from the word perseverance is the ability to go on when things seem hopeless. It is also a measure of success, or at least how much sacrifice one is willing to make in the name of success. As a student assistant, it is impossible to achieve personal success without having a goal, or direction. The goal and direction that often propels us to achieve is perseverance. Without perseverance our life as a student and a student assistant will be more hard and complicated. If we do not persevere and try more day by day we would surely miss out on things like, passing school activities, reviewing in between work and class schedules and getting office work done on time. To persevere at some point also means giving up communication with friends and family, less time for entertainment, reading, and social media.
It is therefore important that as a student assistant we think like everything that we do would make us achieve what our goals are and make up for the things we persevere through. And this is where Discipline comes in, Cambridge Dictionary defines discipline as a training that makes people more willing to obey or more able to control themselves, often in the form of rules, and punishments if these are broken, or behavior produced by this training. Discipline is as simple as avoiding the use of social media/phone when you’re reviewing for exams or doing your office work thoroughly even without anyone looking. As a student assistant we are disciplined in terms of etiquette with the use of rules and regulations and policies set to us to follow everyday, but as a person, do you have certain tactics on how you discipline yourself? Of course, each of us has a different way of disciplining ourselves, it doesn’t matter how big or small the way of discipline you do, rather the basis of discipline is how hard you do it to yourself. When we are disciplined we get to avoid things that are unnecessary, you get to be more in line with your goal, the thing you persevere for and your life’s direction. To discipline oneself is also a sacrifice like persevering, when you discipline yourself, you have to avoid, remove, and give up things, time and entertainment to yourself. But the gist for all of this is surely worth it like having good grades, appreciation from the office, being dean’s list, or having latin honors etc.
Therefore, perseverance and discipline are long term settlements for one’s self. It might seem hard as a student assistant but of course we wouldn’t want it to be wasted thus we must always remember that if we wish to achieve more, do more and have more in life we must persevere and as we persevere we must be disciplined. As Elias Lyman Magoon said – “The practice of perseverance is the discipline of the noblest virtue. To run well, we must run to the end. It is not the fighting but the conquering that gives the hero his title to renown.”
Thank You!
– Ma. Elaisa S. Ilao, IST
