What Discipline Looks Like

August 26, 2020

Cameron came to the gym begrudgingly back in 2016. His mom had reached out because she saw that he was an unmotivated, undisciplined 14-year-old kid who needed something to do.  His parents were divorced ,and his mom worked a lot. There were a bunch of other circumstances threatening to force this kid into making bad decisions in the near future.  

Cameron hated working out. He’d come to the gym with his hat pulled down tightly over his eyes. He’d do a set, slide down the wall, and scroll through his phone until I said "Ok, time for the next set," at which point he’d pull himself off the floor as though I’d just threatened to douse him with gasoline and light him on fire.

Over time, our “conversations” were filled with stories, jokes, questions, and lively debate, but I was the only one talking. I’d ask him about his likes and dislikes, how school was going, what his friends were like, what his diet was like, whether he liked the workouts, etc. This one-sided dance went on for the full hour. He’d shrugs, say “I don’t know,” and avoid eye contact.

This went on twice-weekly for 12 very long months. I’d sit in my office for 15 minutes before every session, rubbing my temples trying to summon up the energy and creativity to drag some sort of response out of this kid. I never could.

At some point, Cameron told me he would be taking a break. Let's just say I didn't put up much of a fight and didn't see him for almost his entire junior year of high school.

Right before his senior year, he texted me asking to start up again. Shocked is an understatement. I had to do a little soul searching before agreeing to see Cameron again. When he walked in this time, I was surprised. He’d shot up six inches in height and was well dressed. He looked me in the eye when I told him I wasn't interested in the B.S. from a year earlier and that I wanted him to agree to commit to training on his days off from working with me. I told him we would discuss nutrition every single day. I also said that I expected us to have real, adult conversations with him using full sentences. He grinned and agreed, and away we went. 

Cameron trained hard, and his shell started to crack. He has Alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that causes his body to attack hair follicles. Not the easiest way to go through high school and definitely a reason why I stuck with him as long as I did. But by his senior year, Cameron had a little swagger, a job he was proud of, and a car. He was showing up on time and doing what I asked of him.

When it came to school, though, he was a bit of a disaster. He had no plan for after high school other than to take the money he had saved over the last couple of years of work and enroll in a program to travel the world for nine months, staying with host families and in hostels. I was baffled as to how and why he was interested in this and how he found it. Cameron's strength is research and a dogged pursuit of somehow making happen the thing he wants to happen.

What he didn't want was to do well in school. He just wanted to graduate and disappear. I was dumbfounded how, at 18, this kid was going to pack a bag, join this program, and fly off to China, Vietnam, Brazil, etc. But he did. After graduation, we shook hands, and Cameron was gone.

A year later, he texted me again wanting to train. He’d had an incredible time and was filled with stories about his ability to survive through crypto currency, plan his travel, work for whatever local business he could find, and sleep anywhere and everywhere.

He was also freaking out. On the trip, he met dozens of kids his age doing exactly what he was doing. The difference was that every single one of those kids was taking a gap year. Cameron didn't even know what that was. All of these kids had a plan for the following year. The only plan Cameron had was to keep traveling. He came to the realization that he did want to go to college, and we spent our first two hours together with him yelling about how badly he’d messed up his life, how he was never going to get out of Marin, and how he was essentially doomed to live in a van down by the river for the rest of his life.

We somehow managed to scrape together a plan to get him registered at College of Marin, with the hopes of transferring after the first semester to another community college in another state, just so he could get out. Home life was not the healthiest, and Cameron was pretty bummed.

He registered for COM, and I held him to the plan, reminding him that the only way he was going to get out was by showing anyone who would listen that his high school grades were the result of him being lazy, not him lacking intelligence. He had to prove that he had the ability to learn and get work done. Anything less than straight A's was unacceptable.

I never told him this, but I truly didn’t believe Cameron could do it at the time. Still, I was in, and we had weekly whiteboard planning sessions regarding scheduling his time. We shared a Google calendar to map out his months, days, and even hours.  

Cameron pulled off straight A's during his first semester at COM. Unfortunately, he didn't have course load needed to transfer to a four-year school, which he’d since set his heart on. It looked like he was going to have to keep going to COM to finish the two-year program. Cameron wanted to give up. We met for our weekly sessions, and there were daily phone calls and text messages, too, either to keep his head in the game, come up with an alternative plan, or motivate him to see his professor or counselor or dean or tutor. Cameron didn't have the discipline yet to do this on his own. Every kid needs some kind of advocate in their life telling them they can and should do more than what they think they can. Sometimes this is a parent, and sometimes it’s someone else.

I don't know how, but I became this person for Cameron.

When Allison and I started the college process with our older daughter, Lyle, the timing coincided with Cam's journey of getting through COM and applying to a four-year undergraduate university program. In my family at home, together we discussed options, made plans, engaged in research, and sought out resources to help us navigate. Cam had none of this. He literally had me. He didn't know how to apply to college, how to write a college application essay, how to cobble together transcripts and recommendations. I was feeding him the information I was learning on the fly from my own experience. And he also had his own determination and discipline to make something happen.  

There were missed deadlines, pleas for extensions, and late-night emails to Allison asking her to edit essays that were due in the morning. There was also his own mix of emotions about being a "Have not" through a process favoring the “Haves.” We worked around the pitfalls and kept going back to the whiteboard and calendar. 

Keep working on what you can control and ignore what you can't. Keep researching options and requirements. Keep feeding dates and responsibilities into the calendar.  

I would get to the gym at 5am, and the first thing I would do is look at our shared calendar and text Cameron a message about what he had to do that day. I demanded a response by the end of the day confirming that it had been done.

Finally, the process was over. Applications were submitted and the waiting game started. Cameron was going to graduate from COM for sure, but that was never the goal. He’d created a high standard for himself and wouldn’t be easily satisfied.  

Then, the acceptances staring rolling in. First came UC Santa Barbara, then Boston College, then Wisconsin, then UC San Diego, then Berkeley!

Still, he wasn't satisfied. Cameron knew what he wanted. In the end, it came down to University of North Carolina or University of Virginia, and UVA was the big winner. They got Cameron.

Figuring out how to pay for this venture was the next hurdle. Cam’s parents didn’t go to college, and this was not a landscape that they were equipped to handle. He and I worked through the process, in much the same way as we’d tackled other challenges. Cameron is now living in Charlottesville, VA, in an apartment with four roommates, set to start virtual classes on Tuesday.

I spoke to him this weekend as he walked around campus taking it all in. This year is obviously not the scene he envisioned. The streets were quiet on Saturday night. There were no raucous block parties or fraternity blowouts. There’s a pandemic stealing young people’s experiences. We talked about his journey and how he doesn't like dwelling on the past. I love to break his chops about what a little jerk he was when he first came into the gym, and that makes him laugh.

We are going to talk every week, because this relationship is now an investment.  I'm in for the long game and he knows that. Besides, I miss him already.

Here's to not giving up. Here's to discipline. Here's to Cameron.