Persistence

by G.Parker

You might remember my mentioning that my husband is going to school. His bane of existence right now is a language and communications class. He had to write a paper (that was a production in and of itself), and now he's doing a presentation that has to be filmed and emailed or posted on YouTube. Not only did he have to outline exactly what was to be covered, but he had to script the entire thing and each of these steps had to be approved before he could continue.

He had hoped to have the presentation done by Monday so he could move on to the other classes he is trying to finish up, but things didn't go as planned. There were problems with the lighting -- the room was light, but it looked like he was trying to film a black and white movie from the 40's. The top of his head was mostly cut off, and that needed to be adjusted. The sound didn't come through the finished product and we had to rig up another microphone. He has a large chart that is part of the presentation -- that was the difficulty with Monday -- we had to get it printed large enough that it could be seen on the presentation; but it doesn't show the numbers, only the graph clearly. Oh well.

It's been a nightmare for him because he isn't comfortable with giving presentations, talks or anything that requires him to be in front of people. Also, it's taken so many steps and trouble shooting to get the video to come out right. We had to rig lights, add a microphone because the cameras we had purchased didn't pick up the sound, etc. I feel like our spare room has become a TV studio. It has given us a minimal glimpse of the filming industry and how it works.

What has impressed me the most throughout this whole project, has been his determination -- his persistence in getting the project done. He could have given up at any point and no one would have blamed him (outside of the university people). I wasn't going to let him give up, but it hasn't come to that. He has grit his teeth, planted his feet and plowed ahead. He's gotten a little cranky, he's threatened to blow up the evaluators computers, and he's growing round eyed from staring at a computer screen all day, but he's doing it.

I figure we could all learn from this example, especially when it comes to writing. We don't always want to write -- it's not always convenient and many things get in the way -- but we need to persist. At some point in the future we hope to be a published author. Persistence is the way.