Choosing life’s battles
COMMENTARY
Ryan Salzman

If there is one thing that I learned during my time as an intern in Washington D.C., it is that the system that we live under is not finite.

Instead, I came to realize that what I experienced was nothing but a small part of a constantly evolving state of existence. Most of the legislation that we see has been in the works for years and years. Many times, legislation proposed during one session of

Congress doesn’t even come up for vote until another Congress has been elected.

It is this fluidity that got me thinking about the grander scale of life.

In my years here at TCU, I have known many people who treated every day as if it were do-or-die. This constant fretting and pushing caused them to burn out to the point where they did not know what to do and instead decided to do nothing.

We’re never told that we should take it easy and not worry about something that could seem important. Each professor believes that his or her work is the most important and that extra time should be spent completing it. Never do they say, “Hey, if I were you, I would take the evening off and concentrate on living a healthy college life.”

How, might you say, should I do that? The professor would then say, “Spend some time with your roommate and go see that movie that you are both interested in seeing,” or “go to the bar, take some shots and flirt with a stranger.” I am not trying to say that students should be encouraged to engage in deviant behavior, but there is a place in college life for having fun and doing things that typical college kids do.

Life, like our governmental system, is fluid. There are many aspects of life that are first introduced to students when they move away to school. If these aspects are not given adequate attention then many of life’s lessons will go unlearned. Doing laundry, washing dishes, cleaning and basic home upkeep are very important. These things will be necessary for the rest of our lives, and college is the time to learn how to do them correctly. Making appointments and paying bills on time are also important. Life is long and many times, arduous and simple repetitive tasks such as these can go a long way in determining one’s success.

Having a healthy social life is also important. What good is a 4.0 GPA if you have no one to celebrate it with? In fact, all relationship building is important whether platonic or romantic. I learned in D.C. that networking, not your GPA, is the way to a good job.

There are many important parts of life that cannot be taught in a classroom, and these all deserve attention.

Now that the Major League Baseball season has started, I find it appropriate to draw a comparison between the sport and life. The Rangers this year have a team that is predicted to do as poorly as those in recent memory. The fact is that they will probably finish last, but in finishing last will win around 70 games. They will lose upwards of 95 games, but it is still impressive that a team who is supposed to be a disappointment will win so many games.

That is how life is. Victories and losses come in all sizes whether it is failing a quiz worth less than 2 percent of your grade or getting in to your top choice of grad schools. The fact of the matter is, these events are just a drop in the lake of life, not world-ending events, and they should be taken as such.

Choose your battles carefully. Too much energy spent in the wrong battle could be extremely detrimental just like the Rangers lack of focus on pitching or our government’s lack of focus on anything that is important to most people.

But no matter how bad you screw up, there will always be another chance.

Ryan Salzman is a senior political science major from Temple. He can be reached at (r.w.salzman@tcu.edu)