Making Versus Receiving Good Luck

It was about 20 years ago at this point, but I remember taking a college course on personal business practices.

I was a competitive swimmer in college and had to miss the midterm exam for the NCAA championships. This meant scheduling a later date to retake the exam, which I had to take alone in the professor’s office, in his company, to ensure I didn’t cheat.

Before and after the NCAAs, I completely neglected studying for the exam. I took the class as “Pass/Fail,” which one can elect to do for a limited number of classes. This meant that I only needed to get above a 60% average to pass the class, and the letter grade would not affect my overall GPA.

However, a 60% on this exam seemed like a pipe dream. I not only didn’t study; I routinely fell asleep during lectures and read almost nothing from the course textbook. So I went to the office expecting the worst possible score.

“I want to be honest,” I told the professor. “I do not feel that I am prepared for this exam like I should be. If my grade is poor, I deserve it.”

“Well, just do your best,” the professor said.

So I took the test, and it is no exaggeration to say that I didn’t know a single answer. The entire exam was multiple choice, approximately 30 questions, and I guessed on every single one of them. I handed the exam back feeling defeated.

“Do you want to know how you did now?” The professor asked.

“Not really,” I said. “You can email me.”

That night he did email me. “You must have been too harsh on yourself, because you received a 97%, one of the top grades in the class.”

I couldn’t believe it. Talk about pure, raw luck. What karma brought forth this? Surely it was more than just my honesty, if karma is real.

I paid more attention to lectures going forward, read the textbook, and studied for the final exam. That score ended up being an 80%. Go figure.

People say luck is best when it’s earned. Sometimes I think back to that scenario and wonder if that’s really true. The 97% felt much, much better when I didn’t earn it.

I also think back to that story when something extraordinarily unlucky happens to me. Maybe we all have a luck meter, and once it’s used up, it’s depleted forever, and the universe has to even the tally by doling out bad luck.

And if that’s the case, perhaps the exam wasn’t the best situation to use all my good luck on.