The Last Word

By Matthew Bolter | Posted: Wednesday August 30, 2023

Ice Cube once said "There’s nothing wrong with starting off in a box, but you got to have a plan to come out that box."

Five years ago, starting off in that box, I was a vastly different person to the one I am today. Cruising through Balmacewen Intermediate, my biggest concern was finding the next opportunity to get myself out of class. With this mindset, I really enjoyed Year 8. However, I also found myself not being able to reach many of the goals I set. I was never picked up for maths extension, was average at any sport I did and never really excelled at anything else.

However in the back of my mind, a rhetoric was being drilled in. As we entered term 3 and rolled onto term 4, the teachers suddenly began calling everyone out for slacking off.
"In high school you are going to have way more homework than this every day."

"If you aren't able to manage this work, you are going to struggle in high school."

"What you do in high school is going to determine what you can do in future."

These ideas stuck.

Although we all realised early on in Year 9 that high school was not nearly as difficult or crucial as we had been lectured, it had left a 4 foot 10 Matthew Bolter very paranoid.

A few weeks into Mr Moller's junior maths class I found myself faced with a geometry end of topic test. Looking back now that sounds like nothing I should have stressed over, however I had acquired an idea that each assessment was the be all and end all of what my future would hold. So knowing that high school is all about studying as hard and as often as possible, I grinded out geometry practice tests and questions. Sounds depressing, but I like to think in some ways this near meaningless first junior practice assessment did in fact shape who I am today.

I had never considered myself particularly smart, and so I thought my success was going to be found through hard work. Notorious BIG once said "we can't change the world unless we change ourselves" and it was this mindset shift that led to my world changing with an E24 in the test. Something I'd only go on to achieve a handful more times in maths. The grade itself doesn't matter, but instead what was important was a powerful connection that was established. Simple hard work does indeed lead to results. An overblown understanding of what high school was, paired with my first challenge, set the tone for the next 5 years. Simply, the lesson I bring to you, is to put in time and effort into the things you do. It works.

However this is too easy. In real life, work doesn't always work. We slave away on calculus problems, and yet they don't make any more sense than when we started. We can spend weeks training, but not find ourselves any fitter, faster or more coordinated. It's an age-old human problem that we all improve at different rates that don't correlate to the effort we put in. And this is something that is too easily glossed over. We've all heard motivational speeches that tell us to try and be 1% better everyday at what we do. In reality, when we measure ourselves against different metrics, whether that be in sport, academics or arts, it's easy to see that getting better isn't as simple as 1%. Some days are more like 10% and others we go backwards. The solution to this presents itself as an even bigger challenge. Dropping the short term mindset of trying to chase quick improvements and instead focusing on working towards long term goals. To quote 2Pac "the seed must grow regardless that it's planted in stone" meaning that no matter our situation, we need to look to flourishing in the long term rather than worrying about getting better in the next week.

See, when we focus too hard on getting better every time we put effort into activity, we are bound to have days where we don't improve or even go backwards. I've come away with test results that left me disappointed, ran races where I've wondered what is even the point of running if I'm slower than a few months ago, or just sat down to some study which left me feeling I knew less than when I started. If I approached all of these with a short term mindset, I would be instantly demotivated. All that this narrow lense would tell me is that I'm not getting better or I'm worse than when I started.

Instead what we all need to do is zoom out and think that, for every effort put in, a little bit is chipped away at a larger long term goal. This is the concept of delayed gratification. Knowing that you won't be rewarded today or tomorrow, but instead in the far future. Delayed gratification is a hard skill to learn, putting blind faith into what you're doing with the idea that one day it will pay off. But it is this ability that makes someone successful. To quote Jesse Owens "We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.” We all have different goals. What we all have in common is that putting in work everyday, knowing that it could be weeks before we see the results we want, will bring us towards achieving them.

And we don't always achieve our goals. But if you pause and look back, you will see that you've become a better athlete, more skilled or more on top of your studies. No matter the result, the time you put in was well spent.

So, I recommend to you, with exams and soon after the real world coming up, evaluate what your goals are. Don't be put off by the mountain ahead, because all great things require a hard journey. As put by Nas "Keep your vision clear because only a coward lives in fear". Think about what you want to achieve, then only focus on the small things you have to achieve each day to get there. Do that study session or sports practice. Then do it again. No one regrets the time they put into improving themselves, they regret knowing the person they could have become. I'll leave you with a few words from Diddy "If you're chasing your dream you're not running fast enough. Run Faster."