This class is the reason IUPUI PMA exists.
Trevor Pott’s M150 class Spring 2011.
Notice the awesome PMA shirt I’m wearing…and if you don’t know who I am, I’m the goof on the ground (Dylan) and Sony is right above me in the neon-ish green PMA shirt!
Derek Dixon (@dsquared92 on twitter) spied on of our post-its on campus today.
Wednesday, April 27th, Sony Lal and I went around campus and put up post it notes all over with some positive inspiration for IUPUI’s students. It was awesome to see everyone smiling as we put post its like this one on the computer they were using or above the water fountain they were drinking from.
We also handed out candy to about 100 different students, saying “Good luck on finals,” or something of the like to them as we handed them candy. Only a few people paid no attention to us, pretty much everybody had a huge smile on their face.
It was a good day, and I think we brightened some people’s day, if not just our own.
This is me. It reads “Rise and Rise Again, Until Lambs Become Lions”
May seem a little corny, and it is from one of my favorite movies, Robin Hood, but it hit close to home.
The past few years have been trying. I’ve been through many ups and downs and gotten buried under work, school, and life. Every time I hack my way through everything holding me down I stand taller, and people can tell. People around you will respond to an attitude change. If you make a conscious decision to life by the horns, life will submit.
In the movie they say it means “Never give up,” but it means so much more to me. I’ve felt like an outcast before but now I’ve mastered my own life.
Still rough some times, but I stand tall and I see what I’ve built. It’s beautiful.
Everyone’s fighting.
“Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” - Plato I think Plato has it right here. A lot of times you think, “Why should I be nice to that person when they’re a complete dick to me?” when you probably don’t have all the information. Maybe the person you know who’s always in a bad mood or is cranky most of the time is fighting a battle every day and they don’t realize that the way they’re acting on the outside is just making it worse.
I know that most of the time if I’m sour with someone or everyone around me in a day or week it’s because I have so much going on around me with responsibilities at work, mean people coming in and tipping like they hated their meal and their service (I’m a server at a restaurant, among other things), class projects that are due, tests coming up, homework I forgot about until the last minute…the list goes on.
All of these things bring my attitude down and then I’m just doing everything in my life to get past it and move on to the next crappy thing. But if someone’s there to say I’m doing a good job or to compliment my shirt or something simple, it’s going to make my outlook on everything even better.
All that stuff I mentioned is what’s going on in my head on a daily basis…so I might snap at someone when I get stressed but it doesn’t mean I dislike that person. In fact, I like most people, I just let my own stuff interfere with my relationships. So no matter who you meet, greet them with a smile and a handshake or a hug. Be genuinely interested in what they have to say. One day they may see you as the only person who was nice to them when it seemed like nothing was going right in their life.
Just like you fight everyday, they fight too. So fight together.
STAY GOLD
Almost everyone growing up was taught the Golden Rule, “Do unto other as you would have others do unto you.” It’s a staple proverb of most people’s lives. You’re taught at a young age to share and be nice to others, but what happens as you grow up?
The saying “Stay Gold” has become famous because of the movie The Outsiders. In it, a boy recites a Robert Frost poem, to represent the innocence of youth, saying “nothing gold can stay.” Here’s the poem:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
So is that true? Can nothing gold stay? How about that person you know who’s always smiling? You probably know someone who sees the glass as a FREAKING AWESOME GLASS when it’s completely empty. One of those eternally optimists. They’re gold.
What I’m saying is simple…remember what you’re taught as a young person. The person every parent hopes to mold their son or daughter into.
If your parents were teaching you these things they weren’t trying to make a great or nice child, they were making a GREAT man or woman.
So show everyone that your parent’s didn’t raise a good kid, they raised a great person.
Stay Gold Ponyboy,
Dylan James
iupui PMA
