Sex and the City

I have started watching Sex and the City, sometimes the roomies do, too. We started talking about who was most like which character (I'm sure there is some quiz online that I could take). Kristy is obviously most like Charlotte, and Alex like Carrie. Then we got to me, and Will automatically said Miranda. That surprised me a little bit, since I am a romatic and very traditional.

However, the other day as I was walking back from class lost in my thoughts, I realized that I do think like Miranda (in a lot of ways). I believe in hard work, I believe that you should earn everything, I believe in being independent. I don't believe in entitlement. All that "No child left behind stuff?" I say leave them. Otherwise you will teach them that they can get by without a lot of work. I believe that there should be weed out courses and those who are "weeded out" should pursue something else. Life is not about being the smartest, it's about being the hardest worker, the most motivated and committed. It's about being resilient.

I somehow learned along the way that there should be hard work involved in everything. That being successful takes a lot of time and determination (somehow my siblings didn't get this message :-p) I've met many people who believe that they are entitled or use excuses to get ahead in the world and not work hard. I think it is people like this who will lead America to no longer be the world leader in many things.

It's not entirely their fault, of course. Many of us are raised by parents who grew up without anything or didn't spend much time with their kids and want to give them everything. I believe it's a form of enabling.

I have the perfect example to illustrate my opinion. I have a co-worked (I knew her from before, that is the next example). She is also AE. A day this summer illustrated exactly what I mean. Since May we had been told that we were expected to keep a certain weekend open as we would need to work (thanks, NASA). She booked a trip for that weekend. She returned the Monday after our work filled weekend and immediately started complaining about having to stay late that night because she had a lot of homework. Then, later on in the summer, she was upset because I got more recognition than her. She and I worked on a project in the spring also were something similar happened. A deadline was coming up and she kept bailing on the workload because of schoolwork.

A few of my points: I understand the schoolwork thing also, as I also take the same classes. I try to get a lot of work done so that my work time can be devoted to just that: working. I think if you book a trip the weekend before you have a ton of work to do, you need to get the work out of the way. Or, not complain when it's not done. And I think if you're not committed, then you shouldn't be surprised when you don't get responsibility, leadership, and recognition. She expects to have seniority over me because she has been with the lab longer, but she doesn't realize that seniority doesn't come from the time you spend there but rather what you do with it.

Strangely enough, I also got a negative impresison of her when we first me. It was the Summer semester of 2003. She was in the class that Will and I met in, Dynamics. 29 of us were in that class, 23 failed. I knew the situation wasn't right, and that not all 23 of us could be dumb slackers (like Loewy wanted us to think) so I organized meetings and petitioned to have our grades changed. She told me that she was absolutely uninterested in working to have her grade changed. However, when the news went out that the petition had been approved, she was the first to sign up.

Unfortunately life can be unfair sometimes and the not hard workers can still get by, or your hard work will go unnoticed. Either way, I think it's important to take initiative and be a motivated person.

I guess I am just bothered recently by those who want everything but don't want to work for it and get upset when they don't get it. Or, those who complain about their situation but have put themselves there and do nothing about it.

Speaking of busy weekends and too much work, this weekend should be awesome. Six Flags, cycling, tailgating, football, partying, little cousins and perhaps a little homework in between. I hope it's worth it when I'm stressed next Tuesday night...

... I know it will be ;-)