Roll with the punches when life hands you lemons

Marshall University is going to be taking a major hit financially for the next few years. School officials were probably excited when they found out the split with MCTC would give them $1.25 million because of House Bill 3215, but now that dream is gone.

Marshall will be losing approximately $1.73 million in state funding in fiscal year 2010, with a reduction of an additional $2.46 million in 2011 and $4.93 million in 2012, said Marshall president Stephen Kopp. Huntington's budget is $4 million less than it was last year so we have to make cuts.

Plus, these cuts will seem even more strangling to university officials because Gov. Joe Manchin has mandated a tuition freeze. Over the next year, we are going to be faced with some setbacks that aren't going to look very good, but we're just going to have to take the punches.

The school is like a person, it's going to have to make adjustments to save money when it's receiving less. We're going to have to make some changes ourselves as budget decreases trickle down to individual students, faculty and staff.

We can't expect to be unaffected by the university's loss in money. We are a part of Marshall as much as the buildings and top school officials are. So when you find out there might be less scholarships or a lower salary for campus jobs, which are just as open to possible change as anything else, the best way to go is to just roll with it.

There's no use complaining or being stubborn. We have less money; we need to make cuts, plain and simple. There's no way around it. What this is going to do is just make us stronger as individuals. In life, everything isn't always going to be stable or stagnant. Events, people and circumstances change. You could be living in a mansion one moment and lose your job or have some natural catastrophe happen to you and end up with no place to live. Hey, that's what happened in Hurricane Katrina.

It happens and that's what life is. It's how you react to the surprises and the disasters, not exactly what you have.

So, try to look on the bright side, and when someone tells you something you may not like, look for what you can learn from it, how you can grow and become stronger as a person.

Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.