I remember the days way back in the late 1990s when I was a youthful student in engineering school. Life was led casually, without any caring towards the future. Smoking a pack of 20 everyday, boozing with friends and staking the ladies dorm out was the way life was led. Little did I realize that casualness would certainly lead to casualties.

Two years had passed and I was staring down a report card that highlighted FAIL in more than half the subjects. I didn't care a damn, at least not till my dad found out about it. You see, I studied in India and unlike the United States where the students are expected to finance their own education; my dad financed me.

Then came the day when my life turned around on it's heels. It was the day when my dad found out about my smoking habit. He was livid but didn't say much. He did something though that got me all choked up. He told," Son, your allowance is cut IN HALF from this moment forward". It hit me like a roundhouse kick from Bruce Lee. I was jolted out of my bones! I couldn't comprehend how to pay off the debts that I had accumulated in college. I owed everybody money; the grocery store, the bars, the restaurants, my friends, etc. I was living a life filled with credit.

When I went back to college, I knew that if I don't change the way I live my life I won't be able to pay everybody off. So I decided to make some changes, drastic changes. I quit smoking, cut off from my friends who led me down the wrong road, starting hanging out in libraries rather than girl's dorms and started reading my engineering books.

The result? In one year, I went from a miserable failure to a magna cum laude. Life was never the same again. That one incident in my life reminds me that anything is possible if you take action and do something about it, however small or large. Till this day it motivates me when I feel that I am about to lose or give up. It reminds me that I can do it!

The message, my friends, which I want you to take from this incident is that, no matter what challenge you are going through, you can come out of it if you decide to take responsibility and take action towards surmounting it. I could have called it quits and blamed my dad and everybody else for the problem and end up a drug addict on the street. But I chose otherwise.

Every once in a while life will bring you to a fork in the road, where you are required to choose which way to head. Your attitude at that moment in time will determine which one you will choose.

God bless.

John Bino

ParentsINCorporated

‘Empowering people to be more valuable to society'