Withdrawing isn't failing

I learned yesterday that my son, in his final quarter at OSU, made the decision to withdraw from one of his three classes in order to focus more on the other two. The two he kept are graduation requirements. The one he dropped was a one-hour course he took for fun. He liked the class, he told me, but it was sapping energy he needed to apply to the requirements.

My initial, natural response was disappointment, but I knew the more I thought about it he had made the right decision. Withdrawing when he did carries no negative impact on his grade point average. Sure, he might have worked harder to finish the class, but would it have cost him some degree of success on the other two classes and maybe even threathened graduation in December?

I, too, am withdrawing from some things right now in order to focus strength elsewhere. My required courses for graduation as a two-time cancer survivor include:

1. giving chemotherapy the best chance to do its job,
2. keeping myself healthy and strong for recovery from eventual surgery to remove the tumor and
3. doing enough work and personal activities to maintain a healthy sense that I am still functioning normally.

I still don't like having to drop some things along the way, but I know withdrawing is better than failing.