The Secret to Success

At some point in life you have to face your fears, and head on even though you can’t be sure of the outcome. A great deal of people will never reach their dreams and it won’t have anything to do with their ability or skill set. They won’t reach their dreams because they were too afraid to try.

As I took my seat, my palms were sweaty and I could feel my legs shaking uncontrollably. “E, relax, calm down, take your time, everything is going to be fine.” But as soon as I closed my eyes to pray, thoughts of failure raced through my head. It was hard to ignore the negative voices screaming in my head, “It’s no way you are going to pass this test, you have never been good at taking tests, you are too dumb for college,” no matter how hard I tried, I could not shake the voices. Instead of panicking, I stopped and whispered a silent prayer. I remember my past experiences, that whenever I was in a crisis, if I closed my eyes, BAM! God would come through for me and I felt in my heart He could come through again. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for thou art with me, thy rod and staff shall protect me.” As soon as the words were leaving my lips I could feel a presence of calmness come over me, and I felt at ease. It was as if God himself came into the classroom and said in a still small voice, “Relax, take your time, everything is going to be fine son.” I was young, but I was wise enough to know that if God said it, that settled it. So I grabbed my pencil, filled out my name on the Scan-tron and went to work. I approached the G.E.D. test in a way I had never approached a test. This exam had major lifelong implications. It was much deeper than an alphabetic scale, A…B…C…D or F; this exam was for all the marbles. If I failed, I knew I would be broken. My entire future was riding on the results of this exam. For one, I could potentially lose my girl for life. Two, I would be trapped in Detroit for the rest of my life. I learned quickly that the hood is a dead end. I did not know one drug dealer that retired from the game. Even if the Feds did not catch up with them, some jealous snitch ratted them out, or some scorned female set them up. And worse than that, I did not want to be one of those cats sitting on the porch drinking a 40 oz. reminiscing about what I could have been like. On the other hand, if I passed, it was an automatic renewal on life. A renewal I so desperately needed.

The test was timed so I had to be strategic. I did not want to rush it and risk making stupid mistakes, but I could not afford to be too methodical and waste so much time focusing on one section. So my strategy was to skip all the questions I did not know immediately, and focus my energy on the questions I knew or thought I knew. The majority of the sections lasted about an hour and a half. That gave me enough time to nail the ones I knew and wrestle with the questions that were written in seemingly a foreign language. During my breaks, I was so nervous I did not speak to anyone. I did not even use the payphone to call De. I spent the entire break praying. I felt really good about my chances to pass the exam until the instructor handed out the writing portion. That’s when my heart dropped. In my mind the other sections of the test were easier because they only required deductive reasoning. I read a passage and based on the information provided, I selected one of four possible answers. The writing portion was just the opposite. It was a blank sheet of paper with nothing on it. To make matters even worse, they allotted the least amount of time to complete this section. I wasted the first 15 minutes trying to create a thesis. I began writing for what seemed like five minutes, and then I heard, “Please, place you pencils down and pass your exam to the front of the room.” The words pierced through my chest and I felt like I was having a massive heart attack. I closed my eyes and shook my head. I barely finished the conclusion and did not have time to edit my work. I vividly remember thinking “I got that close to having a fresh start.”