The "P" word---potential

So the kids report cards arrived the other day.  This was pretty important stuff, because we've been trying to emphasize to Andy the importance of keeping his grades up now that he's in high school, and Kellie's progress reports have been--to say the least--very disappointing.  She had already lost her phone privileges and this would be the day of reckoning, to say nothing of the fact that I told her if her grades continued to be so poor that we wouldn't pay for her to go to a private school anymore.
So I opened Andy's report card first, and he had all A's and two C's.  One of the classes that had a C was biology, which is a class that Andy just hates.  We had already told him earlier in the year--just get through it and next year you can start taking chemistry (which he loves...go figure).  So, he got the C and we were....satisfied if not happy.  However, the troubling thing was the C in the other class and what the teacher wrote in her comments.
"Does not work to full potential."

That one really stuck me.  I asked Andy if he thought it were true.  He sort of hemmed and hawed and really couldn't come up with an answer.

"Does this report card reflect the best work and effort that you are capable of?"
And he thought some more...and then finally admitted......no.
I told him that if it did, he could tell me.  But he again said that the answer was no.
And I reread to him the teachers comment.  And I told him there was a reason that reading this about him bothered me so much.

"Who here tonight did not work to their full potential?"

Andy thought I was talking about Kellie.  But then, ever so slowly, I turned to....

Myself.

I told Andy how that when I was his age there was nothing more that I wanted to do in my life than to be a sportscaster.  Nothing was going to stop me from getting there.  And that somewhere along the line, I missed it.  That while I could sit there and think that if only I had been pushed more by my parents, or if I had gotten help from the school, or if.....what's the old saying?  If "if's and but's were candy and nuts"....and so ultimately what I had planned for myself didn't work out.  Instead, I got a fine job in the clerk's office, making pretty good money, co-workers that I really like....all the while knowing that I had failed myself.  And that I had no one else to blame but myself.  That Ihad more potential than that, but that I "settled" for the career that I had.  And I told Andy that if he ended up working a 9-5 job, with the gift that he's been given from God in his brain....that if didn't end up as a chemist, or an astronomer, or a video games designer...or any one of the many jobs that he thinks he would like to do...ones that would take advantage of his talents.....that he would not be living up to his potential.  And that the day would come when he realized that he had failed himself.....and he would be faced with the saddest two words in the English language.
"What if?"

Kellie's report card was....better.  She didn't get her phone back.  She still has work to do.  We took her out of her two honors classes to see if that will get her back on track.  I told her if her next progress report indicated an improvement--she would get her phone back.
Its all about the tough love folks, tough love.

Later,
Jeff