What Inspires You?

Gosling

The format for this thread will become rather obvious rather quickly, so: Ling me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMsCuNJJB-8

Donovan me too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bFyMFxTrGs

Intel is apparently doing a string of these, and these were the only two people I've heard of they've wrangled for it. They're using education as their base for all the videos, and I'll keep that going, but really, as long as you're being at least semi-serious about it, do whatever topic you want. I'm flexible.

(takes jar)

I'm mtvcdm. When I first started elementary school, no member of my family had ever graduated from college. My mom got in but dropped out, and my dad was busy serving in Vietnam and never really got back to school. He was getting run from factory to factory because the ones he landed in had a habit of shutting down. The thing he told me back then was to stay in school, get that college degree so I didn't wind up in the same situation.

So armed with those pieces of information, I resolved, going into first grade, that I would be that first college graduate in the family. It got rough, due in no small part to the decidedly substandard treatment I got from my classmates, but I knew full well that, one day, one of us was going to be the boss of the other, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't on the wrong end of the relationship.

So I graduated high school, with a college lined up well in advance, and that got hairy at first because I've never been the best at math and algebra and accounting were proving difficult. But then entered my family. My brother, three and a half years my senior, had also gone to college and, due to the age difference, became the first to graduate, from UW-Whitewater. Then my mom, who had previously left, went back to school and graduated from MATC, the same college I was at. Now I had to graduate, not just for my own ambitions, but also to show I could keep up with the rest of my family. And it took two major switches, and a lot of driving between satellite campuses spread over three counties, but after four years, I got the degree I'd sought since age 6. I wasn't the first, or the second, but I got it nonetheless, and it would not have happened without my family being there to provide inspiration at the most critical times.

(drops coin in jar, hands it off)

What inspires you?

Wonder_Hippie

I had a similar sort of drive, except I actually became the first person from either side of my family to graduate college. My biggest tough-it-out-at-the-worst-of-times motivation, though, was my mother's suicide just before I graduated from high school. She said a lot of things to me in her life time to discourage me, but in those last few years our relationship made a real turn around. And then she did it, and aspects of our relationship as I remembered it drove me through some really difficult semesters.

Tav

I go to a shithole school filled with scumbags and idiots. I am working as hard as I can so I can get into college and never have to have these people considered my peer again. I might sound like an elitist bastard, but this school really is the worst place imaginable when it comes to providing an education.