Helping a friend in need
A while back I had to help a friend who was in a bit of a dark place in her life. She was studying medicine and was at bit of a crossroads. She was tired of medicine, she started feeling like it was not what she wanted to do anymore and wanted to give up.
The problem was that she sort of had a bursary and with it came certain conditions. One of the conditions being that she could only change courses once in her academic career, which she already did. She did not get into the course of her choice in her first year so she did something that would supplement the course that she wanted once she got in. This seemed like a good plan but it backfired in the end because then she couldn't change courses again.
One other big factor was the fact that if she were to quit she couldn't afford to attend a different course. So the main reason why she wanted to speak to my wife and I was to get a bit of motivation and clarity regarding her situation. Friends, even ones that you do not see a lot, can often be a great source of clarity, just by talking over things you sometimes figure things out for yourself.
What I asked her in the end was if she had a choice, could she choose to do anything else than medicine. Could she go any other way or was medicine the only option. I told her that sometimes we must live with the choices that we have made and that we cannot always have what we want at the moment. It is difficult but sometimes you have to make the tough decisions and stand by them, even when things are not looking to great.
Helping a friend is not always about giving advice but more guiding them to what they already know is the right answer.
Quitting is not always the answer
Something I'm seeing a lot these days are young people (I'm also still young but have been told I have an old boring soul) giving up when times are getting tough, which is quite sad. Often if they stuck out for just a little bit longer things could have turned out so differently, hard work is hard unfortunately. I believe this comes from when people are young and the parents change the environment rather than teaching the child to grow, adapt and overcome situations.
I see this in the schools as well, the teacher is always the one at fault never the student. We must stop living like life or anyone for that matter owes us anything, we must work and suffer for what we want. Anything hard earned is its own reward in the end.
@zord189