The Cost of Worry

My first quarter of worker retraining officially ended today.

I got to school a little before 9:00, and a few minutes later, I was in the library working on my final project for my graphic design class, which was due at 1:30. As the library has an earlier version of InDesign than the classroom, I could only do part of it in the library. Fortunately, the classroom had extra lab hours today, starting at 11:00. Unfortunately, I had a math final at 11:30. I went to the graphic design classroom at 11:00 to get at least something done with my project. The lab tech wasn't there and the room was locked. After waiting about 20 minutes, I finally had to go in order to get to my math final on time.

So with no progress made on the project since leaving the library, I took my math test. It was taking longer than I was hoping for it to take, and the longer it took, the more worried I got. Suddenly, Luke 12:25 popped into my head (I love how God does that!):

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?"

The irony of it all! Here I was wanting more time to do my graphic design project, and worrying that my math final would take too long! I was constantly glancing at my watch (I finally had to take it off and put it on the table face-down), and the more I worried, the harder it was to think, and the more worried I got as a result. It's a vicious cycle. I wonder how long my math test would have taken if I hadn't been worried in the first place.

When I finally finished my test, I rushed back to the graphic design classroom, and (thankfully) the room was open by that point. I had about 20 minutes to finish my project and get it printed. I was getting to the panic stage. Needless to say, I got the project in, but it was not in color as it was supposed to be (no time to print it on the right printer). When I handed it to my teacher, I told him I had come at 11:00, and the lab tech wasn't there. He apologized for that, and he later told me that he would look at the color version on the computer (we also turned in a soft copy over the server). Knock on wood, thanks to the lab tech's mistake that was out of my control, I won't be docked for turning it in a few minutes late and in black and white. But I wonder if I would have been able to get it in sooner, had I let go of my worry and taken care of what I could control. It certainly did not add an hour, and my worry actually WASTED time.

Another lesson learned that had nothing (and everything) to do with math or graphic design.