Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,75

starting to look forward to Chem II and lunch and just hanging out with him. He was so easy to be with, not all drama, drama, drama. In fact, he even had a way of tamping down her drama, which was a remarkable thing.

“But I want us to go beyond the history of psychology. I want you to learn to think about how you think, how you process, how you… grow even.” Leaning on the front of his desk, Professor Peters made the rather large desk look like a miniature.

Taylor remembered some of his story, how he had played basketball, in the NBA even. Strangely, he didn’t seem unapproachable or full of himself like she would have expected. No, that day in his office, he had seemed genuinely concerned about her, not just as a student but as a person as well. That said a lot about him, and they were all good things.

“In fact, people get the concept of ‘growing up’ wrong in my opinion. Too many of us believe that growing up means being given a license to do whatever we want. That’s how I approached it when I was your age. But what I’m coming to realize now is that growing up actually means gaining the skills and knowledge to be able to successfully take care of first ourselves and then other people. When we do that, when we focus on that aspect of growing up, all of a sudden, we begin to become responsible, accountable, dependable, and trustworthy. We stop being selfish kids and start acting like the adults we are supposed to become.

“I hear a lot of you these days complain about adulting. I think that’s the result of this misunderstanding of what it means to grow up. It’s like you grew up assuming that adulthood was going to be an upgrade of your childhood. Childhood Version 2.0. But what you find is adulthood is a whole new program, and you should have been playing the lower levels of it starting around freshman year of high school. Instead, you were playing other games like Relationship Roulette and Lord of the Flies: Just Trying to Survive.

“That’s okay. I understand. But in here, we’re going to get into the meat of what it means to grow up in your mind.” He put his fingers to his head. “Taking responsibility for that. You see, your mind is not empty. It is constantly thinking, constantly processing, trying to make sense of your world. If you let it be filled with whatever happens to show up, you will be pulled this way and that way, and you will never find your way. What you have to do if you want to make any real headway is to first consciously decide what goes into your mind. The more you fill it with things that are good for you, the less space there will be for things that are bad for you. That means good books, audio, music, television, movies, church if that’s your thing. Friends, people, the company you work for, the company that you keep. Guard those things like a hawk because they are what is going into your mind and shaping your reality.”

After the lecture, he gave them an outside reading and reminded them that they were to either have a paper on it or be prepared to join the discussion the following week on Thursday. Taylor wrote all of it down, really looking forward to this class more than she had thought she would.

When class broke, she texted Greg to see if they were meeting for lunch at the student union.

“Ms. Grayson,” the professor said as the others were filing out.

“Hm, yeah,” she said, standing as she stowed her phone and picked up her backpack. That left her carrying her books, but it was too late to rethink it. Going up to his desk, she felt like an ant compared to him. He was massive. “You wanted to see me?”

His deep brown eyes were kind and gentle. “I was just wondering how things are being back. I know it’s got to be an adjustment.”

Taylor thought through it, and except for a few bumps, she was pleasantly surprised to find she was glad to be back. “Thing’s are good. I think I’m doing that… what you said, about getting the different program going.”

“I’m glad. So I’ll see you on Tuesday then?”

“You can count on it.” Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out.

Headed there now.

She smiled. “I’m meeting someone