What I Learned in My Jewelry and Metals Class 

During my last semester as a college student, I took a jewelry and metals class. My train of thought was this: Oh, jewelry. I like to bead and do wire working things. I need a free elective. Why not?

It soon became the biggest mistake ever.

I soon realized that it wouldn’t be wire or metal working. Instead, it was using metal, and hardware stuff to make small pieces of jewelry. And, if you know me, I don’t know anything about tools and carpentry.

Needless to say, I struggled. And hurt myself.

There were many times I questioned whether or not I would actually pass the class. I spent several nights at the jewelry lab, desperately trying to catch up with my classmates with their projects. My weekends were spent sanding down my projects for the next class.

And want to know what I told myself?  Well, I’m sure you do, because if not, you would not be reading this. I told myself that it was okay to struggle and not be good at the class. Why? Because I had never even touched this stuff in my life, and it’s something that I have no experience in. So, I was supposed to not be good at it.

By having that attitude, I somehow persisted and got a C. But, that class taught me more than I should never, ever go near power tools again. It taught me to not give up, even though something was challenging for me. It taught me to keep going, ask questions, and try something new when the first thing didn’t go as planned. It also taught me to accept that I am not good at something, and do whatever I can to gain the skills to be good at that very thing.

And, that is the best lesson that I could have ever gotten as an undergraduate. Having that amount of patience with myself has become handy, especially at my job where I have a very limited working knowledge of a clinical mental health background.

So, taking a jewelry class may not have been the best choice for me, and I probably will never use the skill set that I gained again (I think my professor can breathe a sigh of relief.) However, I still am glad that I took the class because I still managed to learn something. How about them apples!