A College Motivational Speech 2061

A College Motivational Speech 2061

By

Marvin Ostrega

An introduction

“I used to believe in movies. I used to believe in love. But that’s really not something to believe in, is it?  I believed that the good guy will get the girl. That good triumphs over evil and life if you work hard at it is fair. None of those things are really true.  More likely than not the bad, rich guy gets the girl while the good, poor guy watches from the sidelines.  What’s good or bad depends on whose interpreting it. And if you work hard life can still be unfair. I am not trying to be a downer. Everybody has had a life that didn’t work the way they thought it would. Some people who were thin are now fat and people who were fat are now skinny.

God has a funny sense of humor.  I have tried many times to put to words what I have been thinking of for a long time. Started many stories, hardly got past the first few pages.  I am a sentimentalist. I long for the past. Live in the present and hope for a better tomorrow.

Ah, the past.

What things I have seen, what things I can’t forget. What problems I have caused and what causes I found problems with. I consider myself an optimist but at the moment feel pessimistic. How the two go hand in hand. I guess I should start at the beginning. Should I start at birth? I was a stubborn baby. Refusing to leave my mother’s womb as my mother tells it. She drove with my father three times to the hospital before they agreed to admit her.

 I was born. A wrinkly thing to look at I imagine. I had marinated for 9 months after all. I grew up in a quiet, traffic free neighborhood. I can still remember the kids playing outside baseball, or freeze tag, or stolen base. Usually, something exciting. The childhood games that neighborhood kids play. My house stood out from the others. While the other houses had nice green lawns and nicely kept bushes. My house was kind of like a forest:  evergreen bushes surrounding a wooden bridge that lead to the backyard giving way to a brick trail.

My dad had done the best he could. He poured years of sweat into that house. Always coming up with some kind of new technological achievement, that, he read about in his Do It Yourself books. My mother was the typical Jewish mother. Making all kinds of meals from scratch, slaving over a stove or gas oven. Her meals at least by the time I was old enough to remember them were as delicious as something made at an eat out diner. I basked in the unconditional love they provided me.

 Then my brother was born. I guess being the younger child he had it kind of rough. My teasing him over his weight didn’t help things and our mom telling us to play nice and for me to leave him alone I heard a lot. I wasn’t a bully. It’s just my brother had a tendency to piss me off and teasing him about his weight was the go to option. It’s interesting to note that in later years he became a junior high school movie filmer and singer listening to such bands as Pearl Jam and Nirvana. How he didn’t kill himself listing to such depressing music made me respect him all the more.  So, when he became a lawyer years later I was shocked but not surprised. His college film degree was as worthwhile as my Communication Journalism degree. Only he had the temperament to go back to school and find something he could make money at, while I was tired and too old to go back and start over again.

I wasn’t big into music until later on in life. When I was younger I just couldn’t handle lyrical music so I hardly listened to it. I steered more towards classical or movie soundtracks. Anyway growing up I ran into my share of bullies.

Kids can be cruel and mean and I hardly stood for it, my mouth getting me into more trouble than I could imagine. I would say brave things to the bullies and I would end up suffering for it. Once, my mother came upon me being beat up by one and she slapped the shit out of him. I mean a big whack. And the bullies’ mom came out of her house and started yelling at my mom. This woman saying I had instigated her son.  My mom saying she should teach her kid restraint. And if he came after me again she’d whack him again.

I went on through public school eating my lunches mostly alone in the school auditorium. The teachers fed up with telling me that I had to be quiet and not talk to my friends while the principal was making announcements during lunch. I would eat my lunch and then explore the auditorium finding teaching devices and learning how to operate the stage lights and curtains. It was fun. And I learned I had been given a lot of leeway. I probably relieved a stressed out principal. It wasn’t like it is now where someone is always watching you. They literally forgot I was even there. Once my homeroom teacher came to collect me saying she felt bad not asking someone to find me. She was that relieved that I wasn’t in class she had forgotten about me.

I guess I was the first in my class to start thinking about girls as sexual objects. I guess, when your first infatuation kicks you in the balls because you tell her and her family to go to hell because she had insulted you, and you kick her back in around the same place and you both fall to the ground in pain it’s hard not to laugh at the stupidity.  It kind of shapes your view of women. Not in a bad way.  I would never hit a woman now but back then, as a kid, who knew a girl cold feel pain in that area too? A lot of these arguments came about because I would always question things to death and my childhood classmates were not the kind of classmates who wanted to listen to endless debates. I guess I learned my lesson with keeping my mouth shut with a junior high school bully named Barf.
 Barf was the kind of kid who decided he would torment anybody and everybody waiting for the bus to school. If you said anything to him in defiance he beat you up. And every day for two years in junior high school I ended upon with my face in the grass having my head punched into it.

 I guess with all my interactions with people my extrovertedness turned to introvertedness a fancy way of saying I just kept my views to myself. For years I hated the fact that I couldn’t just say what was on my mind without getting in trouble for it. Years later Barf got hit by a car that broke his leg. I can’t say I wasn’t unhappy over that. 

So, years went by, I grew older, learned love and loss and then pain and anguish. A lot of women in high school brandished me a womanizer without a woman. They felt I was a male chauvinist pig. I thought they were just weird.  I had my views. While the other guys and gals were hooking up I was busy doing my homework and school work trying to get my grades up to get into college. And then before I knew it I was in college.

Suffered through, got my degree and went on with my life. Sure, there were adventures in college. First girlfriend refused to have sex with me. She enjoyed playing games. Second girlfriend gave me an STD that was quickly taken care of with penicillin.

My college life consisted of wacky professors, who in another life, would have made it as brilliant writers but somehow ended up a little short of the goal, and ended up teaching. They loved me. I was the go to guy when other kids were stumped or they needed someone to keep the discussion in class going. Then in my junior year I fell ill and had to come home. I finished out my college years at my home college.

Nice place. Full of civil minded college students. My mind was allowed to flourish again. I started writing for the college newspaper. I was a movie critic. I was a columnist. A lot of the students loved what I had to say. Then I graduated into the deceitful reality of real world jobs. I couldn’t find a reporting job. I couldn’t find anything at my local paper. Apparently, my political views did not match up with their political views. They were a Republican paper. I was a Democrat. I had always assumed once I had an internship with them I would be offered a job, at least this is what my college made me believe. I worked all kinds of hours for them and was rewarded with a nice handshake and an out the door you go mentality; made me curse their name for years.

But what had I expected? I was coming to the realization at college that my field was the wrong one to go into. That no sane person ever got rich at it but if you loved what you did that was your reward.  My scummy college could have told me that way at the beginning of my studies and I would have gone into something else. They didn’t. Even now they send me a letter asking for a donation. I put the note back into the self addressed envelope and send it back to them, a trick I learned from an old college roommate. His reply to my question, why, was, Well, I am just giving them back the note. Let them send it to someone who cares.

It’s not that I don’t care for my old school. I just feel that once again I got the short end of the stick. A lot of people will tell you let all this go get on with your life, which, to a certain extent I have. I do my digital art. I write selectively. I try and give my two cents. I get the usual Heckles. No one likes you when you’re on your way up and everybody wants to kick you when you’re down.

 My advice on this subject is two-fold.  Don’t let anything stand in your way. If you think you haven’t done anything wrong and life still throws you curve after curve, people frowning and making comments to your face and behind your back. Know that you are a decent human being and everything that goes around comes around. If you really did something wrong the police will arrest you. If not they will leave you alone. And, above all else, if you achieved a disgrace you will be forgiven. 

So don't worry about the past, worry about the present, and strive to make the future a better place.