Are You a Risk Taker?

Let’s just begin by saying right out loud…I am a risk taker…

I have been my entire life. It’s just who I am and I’ve accepted that fact. When confronting a situation that I’ve never been in before I quickly assess it and make a decision.

Let me give you an example…..it was 1973 and I was sitting in a room at Tulane University taking my final English exam. As soon as I looked at the exam I knew I was going to fail it. That’s because we were asked to identify which books the teacher gave quotes from and I hadn’t read all the books. I had only read a few of them and wrote papers on those.

So as I stared down at my exam I knew that I could not answer hardly any of the questions. Done, I was going to get an “F.” Soooooo, I thought, since I’m going to flunk anyway I might as well do something totally off the wall and have fun with it. Should I take such a big risk? Why not?

That’s when I came up with a hairbrained idea of writing about myself and just refer to one of the books that I had read in a philosophical way. I lowered my head, wrote for about  20 minutes and then went to her desk at the front of the class and handed in my paper. She looked up from the book she was reading with a puzzled look. “You’re already finished?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said then turned around and walked out the door. The room was silent with everyone buried in their writing. No one looked up. When I entered the hallway I thought, “Okay, well at least I tried something totally different and she would never know that I never read all the books for her class.

A week later I had to go back into that same classroom to pick up my final. “Oh shit.” I could hardly look at her in the face but I mustered the courage to smile when her eyes met mine. She handed over my exam, and on the front was my grade….

True story….it was an “A.” Seriously?

We talked for about 10 minutes and she explained that in all her years of teaching she had never come across anything like this before. She said she even went to discuss the situation with other professors and get their feedback. All of them told her that it was unprecedented but it was her decision to make. And she said she appreciated the gamble I made in answering in such an unexpected way.

I smiled, she smiled, and I turned and walked away.

Back to today…..I want to tell you that my risk-taking personality is involved in yet another experience that I’m going to let you in on in next week’s email.

So sit tight and make sure you open up the next email from me because you’re going to be part of this one. Stay tuned….

Love,

Adele

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