The Home Stretch

A good friend of mine recently challenged me with some advice to "finish well". It was intended to be a private email, but I've asked permission to post it here. It has encouraged me for the last several days, and I've pasted it below in hopes that it might encourage you as well -- regardless of what stage of life you're in:

JB - You are truly now on the home stretch - post springbreak, last semester, Senior year. You are close. But you are not there. I exhort you to finish well.

Papers, tests, projects, relationships, reputation, family, Fellows, FullVolume, you name it - - finish well.

Throughout your life, you will reach endings - job changes, housing moves, others leaving, etc... These endings come because there are beginnings ahead, just around the corner.

Beginnings are great - exciting - filled with potential - shiny - dynamic - fresh and more.

Endings can seem dreary, a drudgery, a formality not worth the effort. They are not glamorous and often it seems that no one notices anyway.

Finish well at BU, and continue your life pattern of finishing well. And then someday, maybe in 50 years, or longer, or possibly and sadly much shorter, you will finish for that final time. And when you do, it will be so sweet, if they say of you .... "he finished well" - sweet words -sweet rest - sweet reward.