Father Nauckke on procrastination
Having someone who believes in you more than yourself
The Jesuits of Loyola High School in Los Angeles (where I went to school) were legendary. They were smart, funny, compassionate, expected a lot of themselves and their students, committed. They lived up to and instilled in us the motto you see proudly in the hallways and website: Men for and with others. And in my experience, none so more than the Reverend Father Al Nauckke.
I first met him as the student government moderator at Loyola (he would fondly call it "stupid government"). Then he was involved in Speech & Debate club, another activity that was near and dear to my heart. But the men of Loyola (an all-boys school) best new Fr. Nauckke as our college counselor. He had an office and a learning center on the first floor of the main building. You'd see him standing outside the center welcoming students in; during junior and senior year, it was the place to be as Loyola was a prep school.
Now as a poor kid from south central LA and being raised by a mom who never had a chance to go to college, I was hopeful of escaping my world but knew so little and lacked the necessary finances. But Fr. Nauckke believed in me more than I believed in myself. He'd ask me what I wanted to do in life and he'd gather a set of college books for me to peruse. I would never have applied to Yale, Princeton, Georgetown were it not for him. Heck, I had never been to the East Coast and never would until the first day I stepped onto the Princeton campus for my first day at university.
I thought those places were out of my reach, and I'd never be good enough. So in the winter of my senior year, I kept delaying...kept coming up with reasons for not getting the applications done. Most college apps were due in or around December 31. I barely got Yale and Princeton apps done by the deadline; in fact, I remember rushing the essays until the very last moment before I jumped into a car with my friends Steve and Steve to do a January senior service project on a Navajo Indian Reservation in northeast Arizona. I was such a non-believer with a full array of delay tactics that I remember dictating my answers to fill in the Georgetown app over the phone to my sister Jeanne from the Indian reservation in Window Rock.
When word got out to Fr. Nauckke, he was disappointed in me to say the least. I remember getting a package in Window Rock during the service project. I didn't want to open it but finally did; inside were 3 articles from the Smithsonian Magazine on procrastination. That stung, I was embarrassed but I deserved it. Ironically I delayed reading the articles but the gist of it rang true: people often procrastinate because they're perfectionists and afraid to fail. Doing things at the last minute gives the procrastinator either an excuse for the reason they didn't do well or a validation of their genius having pulled something miraculous off in the nick of time.
For me, I was lucky enough to get into all my college choices; I probably didn't learn my lesson. Procrastination and perfectionism continued to plague me through my college years but I always kept the symptoms and remedies at the back of my mind.
Thank god for Fr. Nauckke. I wouldn't be where I am today were it not for him and others like him who taught me so much about my faults but still believed so much in me. #RIPAlNauckke
