Learning from others

You all know I am a Clemson fan. Die hard, blood runs orange kind of fan. My Dad played football at Clemson and I was taught from birth where my loyalties must lie. But, I will tell you that I am huge fan of the new quarterback for the USC Gamecocks. I love his story.

If you don’t know, Ryan Hillinski is a true freshman who has been thrown (no pun intended for a quarterback) into the spotlight due to the season ending injury of the starting senior QB. Ryan is from California, a long way from SC, and comes from a family of athletes. Ryan’s older brother, Tyler, was the starting quarterback for Washington State. Without any signs of depression or sadness, Tyler Hillinski committed suicide in his family’s home in January of 2018. The Hillinski family, while devastated over the loss of their beloved Tyler, began Hilinski’s Hope- a charity that promotes mental health awareness and reducing the stigma among college athletes. They even recently scattered some of Tyler’s ashes on the island of Kauai (which touched me as it is a part of our school theme).  Ryan’s parents, emotionally unable to live in their family home after Tyler’s death there, made the decision to move to Columbia to be closer to Ryan and be able to follow his career at USC.

If you follow college football, Ryan was forced into play after starting QB Jake Bentley was hurt. He had a rhythmic first start against Charleston Southern impressing USC fans and quite frankly worrying USC opponents. He had a decent game in a loss against #2 ranked power house Alabama. Yet, this Saturday, his team played Missouri and they did not fare as well as they had the previous two weeks. I was in Clemson and didn’t watch the game, but saw some of the reactions on Twitter.

I woke up Sunday to some harshness and criticism yielded towards The State newspaper when they published an article entitled “Hillinski Hope Sinks”. When I first read the Twitter criticism I, too, was upset that a reporter would use the title of the Hillinski family’s foundation as a “cute” way to describe a bad game for the QB. As a side note, this is a part of sports and social media that upset me badly. It hurts my mommy heart how mean folks can be hiding behind the screen of a computer. I felt, like many others, that the reporter should be accountable as well as the newspaper. I was outraged that the reporter would use the name of a heart filled, sensitive organization to describe a game.

Then I got to thinking some more. I am daily criticized. I face criticism every single day either face to face, over the phone, via email, on social media, and mostly behind my back. Sometimes that criticism is warranted. Shockingly, I am human, and not a robot, and do make mistakes. Many times, I am criticized for things out of my control-traffic on the road in front of school, a bus issue, state rules and regulations, etc. But most of my criticism comes when dealing with an issue that I had nothing to do with to begin with. So with that perspective I began thinking differently about the writer of the newspaper article. While I didn’t like the title of his article, I didn’t retweet it. I wrote an email to the author of the article about growth. I wrote to him about making mistakes, how to learn from them, how to go about fixing them, and how to make sure you don’t make them again. I also gave some advice about thick skin-because he’s going to need it in the next few weeks. I then made a donation, albeit small-I am an educator, to Hillinski’s Hope. I didn’t hide my criticism. I went to the source and told the truth-kindly, nicely, and with grace. I sure wish the entire world did the same. Maybe we can start. Maybe we can model that for each other, our students, and our community.