Calvin

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”

I heard this quote today. I believe it. It's how I've lived my life. I've managed to make a decent living even though I chose to get my degree by taking classes at night. I used to laugh and say I would finish when I was forty thinking that was a lifetime away.

I started "my career" at the very bottom of the totem pole of the banking industry. I simply went to work every day. I never planned a career. I just showed up and did a little more than what was expected. In my 20's and 30's I suffered from severe migraine headaches 4 days out of 7. That was before the greatest invention ever, Imitrex (thank you Glaxo Wellcome). But I had no choice. If you suffer from migraines that often and you have to work, you work. There were days I walked into walls, but I went to work.

I showed up, day after day. I worked. I didn't make excuses, I didn't complain about making 15 cents above minimum wage and I took one or two classes a night. Slowly, slowly, I worked my way out of the floor-just-above-banking hell. By the time I was 25, I was starting to get somewhere.

I will not argue that if I had been smarter from a career perspective, I could have gone straight to college, gotten my accounting degree, CPA, gone to work at a Big 8 (now there are only 4) accounting firm and I could have walked easier into a career. But I wasn't born into that era and growing up I assumed I would get a job stocking shelves somewhere until I met my husband and had kids and stayed home. That was what was assumed of most girls that were raised in the 60's.

So, I joked I would get my degree at 40. I beat my joke only by a couple of years. In the meantime, I just showed up for work, I was promoted to positions that normally were held with people that had planned out their education and career and quite frankly, I did ok.

In 1991, I married someone who had the same work ethic. That makes for a much more compatible relationship, believe you me.

Today, I think there are too many people who underestimate the simple idea of just showing up for work day after day. Even if it's as menial as filing checks 40 hours a week.

When the company I worked for sold off our division, now nearly 13 years ago, I found myself working a temp job that was alot like how I had started out. It was a big adjustment for me to be back in the rank and file of banking, but I showed up every day. It was less than half the pay I had been making, but it helped to pay our bills until I found a permanent, higher paying job 6 weeks later. I found out I didn't die, we didn't go bankrupt, I could weather a career storm if I had to. I also learned that it would happen even more often to alot of good people in the banking industry.

I do not discount that I've been lucky, but I also didn't take the easiest career path, but I've managed beyond what I envisioned as a little girl, stocking shelves until the babies came along. So I no longer file checks for a living (I think no bank does that now). But I would if I needed to and I would show up with a migraine.

So, who's the first to be able to identify the author of the quoted passage at the start? Without googling it.