A speaker shares statistics on college dropouts and homelessness to argue that quitting is a choice. He says 62% of college students graduate and many homeless people once had degrees or served as veterans. His message: write your own ending and never quit on yourself.
Chapters
Point number 3, maximize your moment. What does that mean? That means I promised me that I would take advantage of every opportunity, all of the resources made available, every open door. I will seize the moment to make sure that whatever advantage I get in life, that I will not let it pass me by. I would take advantage of the opportunities that are before me. You know, so many people enroll in college but does not finish and graduate and walk away with their degree. Actually, 62% of people who enroll in college graduate, while the other 38% falls by the wayside. And then 5 years after graduating, only 70% are still in their career field. What's happening, ladies and gentlemen? People are quitting and giving Give it up. People get mentally fatigued, academically weary, and give up on their dream and give up on their career before they ever get finished. I have a passion for helping homeless people, and every so often when I see someone homeless at the traffic light, I will stop and talk to them. I get to know them and get to learn their story. I take the shoes out of my closet and give to them, clothing out of my closet and give to them. I give them money, buy them food, sometimes even cell phones. And one of the things that I discovered in talking to people is that some of the people that are homeless have a college degree. Some of the people that are homeless are veterans that served in the armed forces of this country. Some of the people that are homeless are mothers and fathers, grandparents, and they're sleeping under trees and eating out of trash cans like I used to do when I was 13 years of age. And you gotta ask yourself, what happened? How did they go from— How do you go from being in college, getting a college degree, to 10, 20, 30, 40 years later living on the street? Listen, it's possible. It can happen. But the difference is that you cannot allow that to be your story. You can't allow that to be how your story ends. You see, life is like a book. It's full of pages and chapters, and you get to write how your story ends. And every time things get tough, Sometimes when things get difficult, it's time for you to write another chapter. It's time for you to turn the page and to move on to the next phase of your story and not allow for your book to end with, and they ended up dropping out of college, or I ended up being homeless, or I ended up being incarcerated, or I ended up being addicted to drugs, or I gave up on my dream, or I allowed for myself to quit on me. You see, ladies and gentlemen, you determine how your story ends. You determine how your book goes. And what you have to do is to stay in control of your life and do not surrender the jurisdiction of your life over to Mr. Murphy. Do not surrender the tithes of your life over to hardship and difficulties, because it's gonna happen. It's going to get hard sometimes. It's going to get tough sometimes. You're gonna feel like quitting. You're gonna feel like giving up. You're not gonna feel like coming here at night sometimes, but you know that you can't stay home and lay in the bed when you need to be in school furthering the advancement of your life. Like so many people miss class, and if you catch up with them and ask them, why weren't you in school today? Why didn't you come to class this morning? And the excuses that they give makes no sense at all. Like, you don't get the chance to just keep going through phases and going through cycles and then it not have some type of effect or repercussion in your life. Like, at some point, Missing class, missing school, or not taking your homework serious and not taking graduation serious—it's going to lead to failure, right? It's going to lead to you giving up. It's going to lead to you quitting on you. But say this with me: I would never quit on me. Do you mean that? Point number four.
