Sacrifice

"Sacrifice/ Don't give up the fight/ Everything will be alright/ On Any Given Sunday/ Depends on you/ Whether you win or lose/ Know you gotta pay some dues/ So that you can get to Monday..."

- Jamie Foxx, from the song Any Given Sunday

Stardate: February 19, 2010. 4 AM. Up later than intended from a nap that started at 11 PM, so that I could focus and into a paper I have due later today at 5 PM. However, as usual, I had a lot of my mind.

This semester has been a lot about sacrifice. That's the name of the game of my "return" to Austin right now - sacrificing and keeping sight of what is most important. I've tried to consistently attend class since first arriving to Austin just four weeks ago (it's crazy how fast the time has gone by so quickly); I've tried to keep up with my readings and assignments in a timely fashion. It has not been easy. I know now that I should never again take anything like "a break" when it comes to this school stuff lol. Because I hit the ground running.

On the flip side, my "involvement" has been little to none. To a degree, I can appreciate this. Being uninvolved and untied to any organizations allows me a freedom to "choose" where I spend my evenings. I'm still going to organizational meetings, but it's not "every meeting, every week" like it was back in 2008. Now, it's like, I'll attend SAAB once a month, attend BSA once a month, and so on. Consequently, I find myself with a little bit more time than I had before. Time to study, but also time to really just spend doing things I hadn't done before or attend events I'd have wanted to attend and be apart of that before I wouldn't have been able to. There is freedom in being able to go out barhopping with friends on the weekends... or being able/willing to say, "No, I can't because I have a paper/assignment due tomorrow."

I would discover that this "sacrifice" of mine was always easy when I kept myself an arms' length away from the UT Black Community, the general UT Community, really. This year, UT will host The Big XII Conference on Black Student Government for this first time in the Conference's history. The Black campus leaders have all been working ridiculously hard on this effort to make sure that the Conference here is amongst the best and brightest ever. I attended one of the final plenary meetings for this Conference (which kicks off next week, by the way) on Monday. I was impressed with the amount of people who had shown up, impressed with the number of hands it seemed that had latched onto this endeavor. It made me miss being a part of that.

In a past life, I was a campus leader. People came to me for advice and ideas. When something like this was about to pop off on campus, I'd be notified and encouraged to be a part of it. In a past life, I would have been playing some kind of role in the Black community's involvement with The 32nd Annual Big XII Conference on Black Student Government. At that meeting, I saw a shadow of my former self: the leader, the motivator, the person who was so influential and so important, the person who was relevant. I hate feeling like, in undergrad anyway, I'll never be relevant again in the community. I felt/FEEL like a has-been. I don't know that this feeling will be resolved or amended within the rest of the time that I am at the University.

Sacrifice is "taking the L." Understanding that something must be let go in order for a real impact or real change to be made. It seems like Black leader Bradford J. Howard is a leader no longer. Like I have to sacrifice that image, that idea of being so important to people on campus. Like I have to sacrifice that feeling I got of pride and relevance, of importance.

Sacrifice is going to be necessary for me to make it to the end of the semester, indeed, to my eventual graduation in May or August. It won't kill me, and it might make me stronger at a later point, but right now, it's certainly going to tear my heart apart and hurt like hell in the process. I hope that my sacrifice is not in vain. On the flip side, I hope that my sacrifice doesn't make me less important or less relevant.