Why Jeremy likes Scouting

I’ve been in scouting for about as long as I can remember, starting all the way back as a tiger in cub scouts up until the present day where I find myself in my 11th year of the program as a Life Scout, working towards Eagle. It would be an understatement to say that I’ve changed during those years, yet Scouting has been a constant in my life. I can tell you that that is no coincidence, and rather is a reflection of the merits of the program, of which there are numerous. There are plenty of other scouts who can serve as living proof of said merits, and consequently I encourage you to read those other scouts testimonials as well, but for my account I intend to speak on one virtue more personal, perhaps even specific, to me, yet I still believe it to be valuable. All my life I’ve felt a pressure to excel, from a young age I showed proficiency in matters of schoolwork. There I continued to get excellent grades> soon it became expected of me. Then I too expected, and later demanded, it of myself. A core part of my identity became, “the smart kid” and consequently this spilled into the other facets of my life where now I always find push to be “the competent one” and certainly to never let myself be a burden. Not to claim that this was purely negative, it would be false humility for me to deny the fact of a natural gift for academics and I’m certainly grateful this has been allowed to grow and perhaps bear fruit. But whether the result of toxic societal pressure or merely the manifestation of toxic parts of my own mind, this need to succeed has had great consequences on my mental health: increasing stress, prompting mood slumps and depressive spurts following minor failures that one should easily bounce back from, an expectation of excellence and a difficulty at starting new things without immediately excelling in them, and an ever present fear that one day the magic will stop working – that i will stop excelling, my talent will be wasted, and I will sink into mediocrity and lose a core part of myself. This phenomenon is by no means specific to me, “gifted kid syndrome” and burnout are well documented and widespread concepts that many can relate to but I find my scenario to be different in that I have been fortunate enough to avoid the most detrimental part of this mindset, and to this I find the credit falls to Scouting. I’ve shown up to campout completely unprepared, forgetting numerous key items, attending many a meeting without knowing the plan in the slightest, had cooking disasters of all shapes and sizes(one particularly notable incident permanently souring my opinion of duck as a protien sticks out in my mind) and experienced all too many poorly laid plans gone awry. Looking back on all this I realize I wouldn’t change a thing, these failures didn’t ruin my experience, rather they’re the very thing that made them memorable. One sleepless subzero night in a summer sleeping bag taught me far more reading a packing list in a handbook ever could have, and at this point I think I'm better at improvising lessons than I am at planning them. Scouting reminds me that I’m so much more than my achievements, than what I can do to benefit others, than the mark I can leave on the world. I don't have to be great to be good and I don't have to be correct to be happy. In Scouts things are far from perfect, sometimes you burn all your food, sometimes your only food is pancakes, but regardless at the end of the day you're always still growing, still learning, still part of the brotherhood. It is no secret that in our modern world that a deluge of anxieties, responsibilities, fears, obligations, and worries threaten to crush us. Failure is not a question of if but of how often and how bad, but it is through Scouting I have learned to thrive not by futilely resisting the bad, but by gracefully coexisting with it. It's this lesson that I think so many of us could improve by learning and I know personally Scouting can teach it. And maybe, just maybe my messy writing, and messier leading, can be part of what proves it to you.

Thank you,

Jeremy Mrotek

By Jeremy Mrotek

Edited and Posted by Talon Silvia