
”See, that is where you and I are different. I would never put my fate in some else’s hands. That’s why I always win. And you lose.”
– Blair Waldorf
Gossip Girl is one of my all time favourite shows. Those of you who have seen the show will probably understand: it’s iconic. For those of you who haven’t seen it: the show is about a group of upper-class adolescents living in Manhattan’s Upper East Side (New York). They are incredibly rich and the show is full of scandal, gossip and drama.
My favorite character in the show is Blair Waldorf. I consider her as one of my role models: she works really hard to get what she wants and her fashion taste is great. She can be mean and immature but overall, I like her character. In one episode (I don’t know which one) there is some drama going on involving another character on the show named Vanessa. Vanessa comes to Blair for help.
However, Vanessa finds out Blair is also involved in this scandal and is afraid that Blair will only do what is best for Blair. Vanessa takes action to help the situation, only to find out that Blair handled the situation better than her and found an even better solution. Because Vanessa already ruined the opportunity to get the better solution, Blair confronts her. Blair makes it clear that Vanessa should have left the situation to her. She ends the conversation with the following quote:
”See, that’s where you and I are different. I would never put my fate in someone else’s hands. That’s why I always win. And you lose.”
This quote really stuck with me because it hit me. It’s a great piece of advice: if you want something to get done, do it yourself. You can’t trust someone else to do something for you. You can’t trust that another person will get the results you want. You can’t be sure that another person will work as hard as you do.
As a business owner this piece of advice has learned me a lot. I have to work with other people all the time, and I can’t trust them to do anything. This may sound really pessimistic but it’s what I have learned from experience: a lot of the time, I don’t get replies to my emails within a reasonable time (or at all), I constantly have to ask them to do things that they are supposed to do for me, and one of the most stressful things is when a collaboration has ended and I didn’t receive the payment in time which results in me sending emails for weeks to get paid for my work.
In my opinion it is not a good idea to rely on the people I work with. Even though this is quite a negative thought, you have to realize that my life work is on the line when things go bad. It would be horrible to get into financial trouble because the work is not done properly.
I am also kind of a perfectionist so I can’t trust anyone else to create content for me. My life would be a lot easier if I let someone else edit my videos but I always have a vision when I am filming and I can’t trust someone else to transform that vision into a video.
This Blair Waldorf-quote also applies to school on some levels. I definitely made some mistakes by putting too much trust in other people. You can read more about it here. When doing group work, it’s almost irrational to trust the other people in your group if they aren’t as motivated or driven as you. Don’t do the group work all by yourself, but make sure you create a system where you grade each other’s work and give each other feedback or adjust the things that could have been done better. That way, the whole group won’t suffer because of the bad work of one or multiple people.
When studying summaries or notes that are written by other students, always make sure that it isn’t too old (as a law student I have to be really careful of this because the law changes all the time), and make sure that the summary or notes itself is actually good. Some people aren’t that good at picking out the most important things in a text/lecture which will make the summary/notes useless. Always update the old summary/notes with new lecture notes and your book if necessary.
So as you can see, if you want a certain result, you can’t really trust someone else to do it for you. You have to get it yourself. It’s the only way that guarantees the work to be done exactly the way you want it to. Just like Blair Waldorf, I would never put my fate in someone else’s hands, and certainly not after the incident that occurred .
I do have to say, this advice only applies on bigger things like the summary/notes, group work or business projects that I have mentioned, things that mean a lot to you and have to go right. It’s good to trust other people, and there are a lot of things where you can rely on others. However, there are a couple of things that I choose to do myself to get the best possible result.
This article is pretty controversial, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Do you agree with it, or do you think thinking like this is too negative? Are there things you never let someone else do for you?
Amazing! I felt like I am reading something written by me. I do this often to but not because I have trust issues but because even I want my things to be perfect, others might do a good work too but not exactly as I want I loved the blog?
You and I, are the same.
I never trust anyone to do the work, even for the organisation of an event. Sometimes I feel like no one cares, even if it’s important!
I love Blair too, I love how she handle things, with an iron fist. Truly inspiring. And her style oh my. But I must say I prefer her fashion tastes in the beginning of the show. ?
Anyway, I completely agree with you, I personally think that some people are born to get their things done by themselves, and other don’t mind to wait after the others. Guess where I am?
I love reading your articles!
Hi!! Every time that i have some group work I ALWAYS end up doing by myself… even if they do their parts that I asked them to do, I always find something that is wrong, that they just simply copy from somewhere and didn’t even change the words, that makes me so mad. I really hate doing group work or whatever it is with other people because I really don’t trust them to do it. So, I completely agree with you.
PS.: thank you for your videos on youtube and for this blog, it really help me on school.. (by the way, hi from Brazil! ?)!!
I’m literally binge watching gossip girl for the 5th time. I know exactly what episode that is.
Wow, you’re such an inspiration! Thank you so much for taking the time to write on your blog and film, even though you’re so busy studying. I honestly have to thank you so much. I never had any motivation to study and I was also so down because I could never keep my grades up. I was in a pretty bad spot. Then, I found your channel, and everything changed. Seeing you study so hard and being so positive and motivational was just so inspiring. I began to feel happy just by watching you. I began studying (after watching all your videos and following your tips) and my grades picked up immediately. I was happy again and it’s all because of you. Thank you so much Rose.
even I am a law student in freshman year I totally forgot about the thing that the law changes …..so I borrowed notes from my senior and I wrote test on it my teacher called me and she said that the law changes…and scolded me a lot ….??….your article was very good. Have great day
I relate to this so much. I don’t like relying on people at all.
I d something which i needed the most. Thanks a lott i got a best advice for studies. As I had a worst day today because maybe i was rely on my friend but she didn’t helped me out.
Thanks once again. Much love xx…
This is somthing*
Sorry guys, but I dont agree with you 100%. I mean, inter alia, I want to be a manager. But TRULY manager. Ik why I said truly, not clasic manager who will act boss or be toxic etc. For manager, other people are everything! I mean, Ways to study, if u think a little bit you will understand. You want to have your personally company and I can swear you will not be able to take all of obligations, work etc. I mean, of course, as director you MUST be “idol” for your workers, and also you have all responsibility for your companu, but you…you should trust your workers if you want to have “helth” company one day. I know, you have bad experience, but it should not stop you trust other people help you, or work woth you. You are also a law student. Think about how many people you will meet, ask for advice etc. In some point, you will need other people help. And its really nice helping each others. Dont let one bad experience “destroy” your “bonds” with other people. Anyway, I dont want to say just lean on others and let them “chasing” your dream, but I want to say, if you want toto be successful and alsothe happy, you will need help andfrom work with others like they will need you too for sure! People are social being, we simply cant working, even living alone. So, you need to be relax, and dont ever have condemn because of, some bad experience, and just make friends, talk with them etc. You will realise that you can trust and lean sometimes on others! Good luck, my dear friend, and dont give up! ?
Hi Rose,
Thanks for sharing this interesting and controversial article! I just want to share some things from my own experience to give a different perspective.
As an engineering student in my last year, I had to work on a large group project where one of my group members did not trust anyone else in the group. In my opinion, she was very arrogant and thought that she was smarter than everyone else. This made her very stubborn and difficult to work with. We were designing a building and everything inside the building was her vision and she would not even hear our suggestions or ideas.
This made the group dynamic ugly and the rest of us group members all grew to resent her. She sensed our dissatisfaction and she went as far as blocking the rest of us from our shared group document (she was the owner of the document). This means the final report that we handed in was all her work (as we could not edit it) and this made me very angry because she had submitted something under my name that I did not approve of.
When we got our marks back, I was happy and angry at the same time because she did not receive a good mark. Had she listened to everyone’s opinions, we would have combined the best of our ideas into one super project. But unfortunately, this was not the case and one person rarely, if ever, can come up with the best ideas. I learned a valuable lesson about how stubborn some people can be and thought it’s an interesting story to share.
But of course, law is a different profession and I can see how working individually will benefit you. Other professions like engineering require tremendous amounts of group work and one person simply cannot do it all.
Best,
Linni
I totally agree, I really don’t like to trust people because they always keep letting me down. The thing is that I’m a med student and something the doctors (my proffesors) say all the time is that we need to learn how to team work, because as a doctor you’re not going to be capable of doing everything alone, you really have to work with others. And that’s something we gotta learn, it worries me but I think I can understand it and I’ll have to be prepared, even if the idea doesn’t seem very likeable to me…
Yep! I definitely agree! I never trust my teammates to do anything during group projects.
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