The most important skill I gained from my time as an undergrad was “hustle.” I don’t mean being able to speed-read (I learned that wasn’t really effective for me), or write a paper the night before it’s due. And I don’t mean pulling a con job or gaming the system. No, I mean doing what you have to do to get where you want when you’re backed into a corner.
Entering Stanford:
Fall quarter of my freshman year, I took Math 40—accelerated calculus—because it was
Eventually the final came. I didn’t do great on it despite studying as much as I could. I 
ended up getting a C in the class. Safe to say it was the hardest I’d ever worked for, and the proudest I’d ever been of, a C in my life. To this day, I’m still proud that I worked my butt off to pass that class. I learned that what was really important was how much genuine effort I put into trying to do my best and that I didn’t need to get only A’s forever to feel validated or good about myself. The world wouldn’t end if I didn’t seem ‘perfect’. And I wasn’t ‘bad’ or ‘dumb’ or didn’t belong at Stanford because I didn’t get an A. I realized that who I was as a person was not dependent upon quantifiable measures and evaluations. That experience with Math 40 set a foundational expectation about the value of working hard to accomplish something, particularly when I felt like my back was against the wall. That no matter what, if I put my best effort forward, that was all that mattered. My fears about failure matured into simply having high standards, but even trying to live up to the high standards we hold for ourselves can make us feel that same pressure.
And then exiting Stanford:
Ten short quarters and three summers later, I felt the familiar wall once again. Finding a job right out of college is not simple. To overcome the internal and external pressures of trying to find my place in the “real world,” I spent countless hours writing cover letter after cover letter, trying to convince employers that I had a useful set of skills and lenses through which to view the world—not always the easiest task for a humanities student—all while working part time to pay for school, making sure to pass my classes, and finishing my senior thesis. My mental, temporal, and emotional resources were running low.
I had a lot on my plate. At times I felt overwhelmed, hopeless, and scared. Time was running out and despite all my effort, I still had no job and no plan for after school. I couldn’t give up though, just like I hadn’t in that Math class four years ago—I had to keep hustling.
On my right thigh I have a tattoo that reads “Labor Omnia Vincit.” I got it during the Summer of my freshman year while I was still a varsity wrestler in order to inspire me to put in extra effort to reach my goals. And although I no longer wrestled by that point, I found it just as, if not even more, applicable. It means “hard work conquers all.”
A ‘to be’ recently graduated humanities student with little relevant work experience, I felt at a disadvantage in the job market–especially to people who had already worked for a couple years. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me from at least giving it my all. I mean, that was the only thing within my power, right? If I put my best effort in and things didn’t work out, then I could at least be proud of how hard I worked to reach my goal, even if it didn’t work out. I applied to over thirty jobs that Spring quarter and finally landed one the week before graduation. Life showed me, once again, that with some effort and a lot of hustle, things can work out.
That concept, that hard work can overcome the odds even when they are, or seem, overwhelmingly stacked against you, inspired me to put everything I had into finding a job and finishing my thesis. The hip-hop artist moving across the country to sell his mixtapes on the street to get his name out, the writer who submits her work to publishers over and over again, the programmer who has an idea for a small start-up and goes around pitching it, that’s hustle. That’s the relentless extra effort that can turn passion and goals into reality.
In the end, it’s you, and you:
In our world of instant gratification, people get annoyed by spending lots of time and effort on any one task. But this attitude reduces our propensity to commit. And committing the time, energy, focus, effort, and resources to work on something is the only way to master or achieve it. You and only you can determine how much effort you put in. No one else is going to, or can, do it for you. Yes, you can ask others for help and there’s absolutely no shame in that, but even then you are still solely responsible for yourself and your own effort. No matter what you’re doing, whether you’re pursuing a passion, dream, goal, or idea, it’s up to you to put in the time, energy, and hustle to make it happen.
