“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, US essayist and poet

Fear can exist without courage, but courage cannot exist without fear. Courage is the slow, steady war against fear, not the absence of it. It’s the series of battles from the voice on your pillow at the end of the day saying, “I’ll try again tomorrow,” to the grand confrontation against your darkest demons. The spark in your bosom, as you stare that demonic fear in the face, as if for an eternity, that spark which forces you to hold your ground for five more minutes that is true courage. And those five minutes reward you time and time again throughout the rest of your life. I speak of courage because someone tried to test me, today.

Today, Student Support Services tried to scare me out of my decision. I came to show my progress and finalize most of the paperwork involved in moving forward, a decision they do not support, and they tried to intimidate me by bringing up the rare past cases where students were forced to remove themselves from school without even an academic warning. They tried to cite other sources which indicated I should take medical leave.

There are two counts that I find amusing about this particular situation. One, they feel they must resort to primal tactics like fear because they cannot hold their argument logically. Two, anyone who is well-informed on the situation supports my stance, completely. I must emphasize these points because the person with whom I spoke still has not tried to learn about the entirety of the situation, opting instead to try fear-tactics to convince me otherwise. I am reminded of some wise words of Albert Einstein…

“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”

- Albert Einstein, German Physicist, discovered Special Relativity