How you can help someone with small gestures
Tristan
2,5 minute read
·A story how someone’s small gesture had massive positive effect on me
Imagine an anxious, sad and stressed student in his second year of the software engineering study. Well, that was me about 4 years ago. Quite literally a breaking point in my life. This is the story of how a small gesture of my friend let to massive (amazing) impact.
So let me give you some context while we go down memory lane; it was rainy and shitty weather all month and the corona virus had closed down all establishments. There was nothing (of course there were other things, but I didn’t know that yet, lol) to do but to ruminate on my arch nemesis: the math test from my first year of my study. I had skipped it 3 times and I only had 1 attempt left before I would would have been asked, in a friendly way, to find a new career, lol. I bumped up a difficulty level with this study and had never had any lectures in it. Most of my classmates already knew the math and how to solve the problems, I had no idea and got overwhelmed. So what’d I do? I skipped all classes and ignored the tests, pretending it didn’t exist. This worked, for a while, haha. But then the final attempt got closer, so close, that I couldn’t ignore it any longer.
A small gesture
You might think: “he has to take action now”. Well you’re right, but of course I kept postponing starting this thing. So the stress and anxiety got more intense. Luckily there were ways to inhale “relaxation”, lol. So I called my friend and asked if we could hangout. He, like the absolute bro he is, said sure let’s go! We were chilling and cracking jokes. Eventually I was like f it, I need help, I’m going to ask him for advice. Which is one of the hardest things to do. I told him how I need to finish this test or I would have to quit school. He thought for a bit and gave me the simplest, yet most deep question: “Do you want to get your degree?”. It was dead silent for a couple of seconds while this question hit me real hard, in a nice way. I looked up to him and said, with conviction: “Yes”. Then he said: “Well then just go and do it”.
Massive impact
I don’t know why, I still don’t know why, his words had so much impact on me. Even writing this gives me chills. But the next day I started preparing for the test. With his words still fresh in my mind. I dropped all less important things and went on a learning streak for 10 days straight. On the day of the test I was stressed in a way I had never experienced before. But I did all I could, I had given it my all. Some excruciating long days went by, then I received the e-mail with my result. I opened it and I saw that I had passed the test. I felt a relieve like I had never felt before, I took a deep breath and exhaled. Everything that I bottled up for so long, well you can imagine what happened. Of course I let my bro know first, and thanked him for it. I still remind him sometimes. He keeps forgetting, but I never will.
Bless people with your small gestures
I hope this story motivates you to support friends, family and even strangers. It might feel like whatever you say has no effect, it very well could have no effect. But sometimes it does, and it could have an amazing impact on someone! Because here I am, using the skills I learned in my study, to build FindYourTriggers.