The Second Time Around

For the two years I spent in College, there were a few subjects which I just did not grasp, no matter how my lecturers tried to explain the subject matter, it just wouldn't sink in.  When it came to University there were only a few modules that touched on the same subjects, one of which I passed the coursework for 100% and failed the exam.  I was given a compensated pass in that module as it was foundation year and it didn't contribute towards the degree as a whole.  For the three years I spent in University I still never fully grasped the subject matter and to this day I still can't get my head around it.

This wasn't the case for everything however, in University I also struggled with a few other subjects, which years later when I returned to them through self-study, everything clicked.  The time away from the subject and the eventual return under less pressure with less constraints combined to create a new mentality and a new drive that allowed me to progress.

This second time around mentality is something that I try to keep with me in life.  There are experiences I have had when younger which never appealed to me at the time.  I try not to let that be a deciding factor in whether or not I would try again, for the simple reason that for other things like the subjects from University, the second time around was very different from the first.  Whatever the experience however meaningful or seemingly trivial, I like to revisit when years have passed just to see if anything has changed.  I have wrote before about the taste of olives as a metaphor for this, olives being something I thought disgusting as a child and you could not pay me to eat them and yet now my opinion is very different.  I fry some food in olive oil, I eat chocolate olives - a type of praline coated in chocolate that uses olive oil in the mixing process and are glazed to look like olives - and I like olives on my pizza where the flavour compliments the other toppings.

Some things however it feels, like those subjects from college, that no matter what you do it just won't work out.  One of the hardest things in life can often be the easiest, and that is the notion of giving up.  To walk away and admit defeat and stop trying.  I find it fascinating that this can be the hardest and the easiest depending entirely on what our desire and what our motivations were for trying in the first place.