He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

—Benjamin Franklin

Mid-terms have come and gone. Shocking as it may seem, we are now halfway through the semester. For most of us, there is now a regular pattern for the week of class, work, homework and organizational meetings. The ritual is now comfortable and familiar. It’s a pattern that will work for the next couple months.

This pattern is a sharp contrast to the beginning of the year, when everything was fresh and new. Even if Gustavus was familiar, everyone came in to this year starting anew, ready to take on the world and make those changes that so bothered us last semester.

Make sure to read the assignment the night before instead of skimming it in the 15 minutes before class. Work on papers ahead of time instead of chugging pots of coffee and writing it at 4 a.m.

And for the first couple weeks, it was easy. But now those goals are gone. The old pattern of last minute work and hyper-caffeinated nights returned again as the homework got harder. Staying on top of everything is hard, especially when there are group meetings, sleep and work, not to mention some leisure time to stave off insanity. God willing, there might even be a social life. There’s just not enough time to do all the homework!

For over-involved Gusties (read: all Gusties), some of those lofty goals that were set at the beginning of the semester have fallen to the wayside, buried under a lack of time that has become our reality. It’s not that they weren’t good goals, or that they were unattainable. They were just too difficult.

Excuses are hyper-prevalent at Gustavus. They’re like KDWB’s play list: I’ve heard it all before, and if I listen all day I’m going to literally vomit out of boredom (and I assume that if I vomit on someone’s shoes they’ll stop vomiting excuses at me).

Here are the three big ones that I hear: lack of time, difficulty and “nobody’s perfect.” And in my opinion, they are all wrong.

If someone says, “I wasn’t able to study for that test because I didn’t have time,” what I typically hear is, “I didn’t plan to manage my time well and this test is going to suck because of it.”

When I hear someone say, “I wanted to fix that habit, but it was too difficult,” I hear, “I’m lazy and like how things are, so I didn’t change anything.” I know smokers who have been able to quit mid-semester, despite some pretty severe nicotine withdrawal. Your own habit is probably much easier to quit than that.

But perhaps the worst excuse is blaming humanity. “Yeah, I know it was wrong, but nobody’s perfect.” While I agree that there has been no perfect human to date, that does not excuse a mistake. When this excuse is used, it binds us to the status quo, unable to move forward and content knowing that there is an excuse primed and ready for us.

For the rest of the semester, be honest with yourself. Don’t excuse your mistakes, but own them. Learn from them.

And make fewer next time.