Let Doors Slam in Your Face

Ryan Gillott | Editor 

Peggy_Marco - Pixabay

Life won’t hold your hand. Life will open doors for you, but it will also slam them in your face unexpectedly. The best way to lessen the pain of those blows is still trying to go through the doors you think life might -rudely- slam. Every letdown prepares you for the next two doors that open.

Turning and running will only hurt you. 

Back in high school, I’d usually run and hide. Procrastinate my problems away and avoid anything that only ‘might’ lead to any sort of confrontation due to discomfort. I was nowhere near my best self because of that. It reflected in my grades and shut any possible doors that might have opened if I took a chance on myself.

When I started attending LCCC in the winter semester of ‘22, it was the biggest and most intense risk I had taken on myself. I had been out of school for almost five years and was unhappy with the trajectory of my life. That’s when I jumped right into the lion’s den by taking a condensed course online. There were many sleepless nights and pondering running like always. 

But I knew that running this time would close a lot of life-altering doors.

Long story short – I did my best. I completed that grueling first semester and lived to tell the tale. So I did my best for the next, and the next. A door opened to join PTK due to my hard work, and I stepped through. This past summer, I stepped through one of the biggest doors in my life - the Bucknell Community College Summer Program (BCCSP). 

It’s a program that recognizes hard-working community college students. You get interviewed, and if accepted, you take two courses at Bucknell for free. Afterwards, you may even get four semesters of tuition paid for to attend the highly esteemed university. I contemplated bowing out before even trying because of the stress of failing, but I took another chance on myself.

If I didn’t step through that door, I would have missed out on all of the fun I had there, the friends I made, and the chance to get a bachelor’s degree. This door is only open because I kept going through uncertain doors, embraced challenges, and discomfort. It’s the only way to grow.

So, dear reader, please do yourself a favor and embrace any challenges that make you feel scared. The payoff is well worth it.