We all avoided having Teresa check our work.

I was a student in an electronic design course where every week we had to design and build a specified digital circuit. There were different supervisors in the teaching lab throughout the day, and we soon learned that all but Teresa would give credit for designs that were "close enough" and "more or less correct." But Teresa? She examined work fastidiously and insisted on absolute perfection. She was blunt and cold, and she even seemed to enjoy pointing out our errors.

One day, I finished building a calculator and wanted to have it checked so I could move on to the next project. Teresa was the only supervisor around, and since I was sure I had a good design, I let her have at it. Teresa found an obscure design flaw. It was late in the day and I couldn't figure out how to fix it without starting over, so I stomped home angrily.

Then a thought came to me that stopped me in my tracks. "Would you rather use a product whose design was approved by Teresa or by one of the other lab supervisors?" I saw that my intentional avoidance of Teresa wasn't totally honest. I didn't want to be a person responsible for turning out shoddy work.

But what about the way she treated us? I prayed for divine inspiration on how to get along with her. I saw that she expressed some qualities that I could admire, such as integrity, orderliness and precision. To me, these qualities are linked to the spiritual truths that are the cornerstones of the universe.

Integrity, for example, stems from Truth, which to me is another name for God. Teresa's expression of integrity affirmed to me her connection to her divine source. Negative qualities, such as her unsmiling bluntness have no spiritual source and had no real power to affect me unless I let them. By recognizing and appreciating her spiritual qualities, I wasn't bothered so much by her negatives. I realized that even if I didn't like the way she went about it, she was actually doing us all a favor by firmly holding us to a high standard.

As my attitude softened, an interesting thing happened—I figured out how to fix my design! By releasing the resentment, and therefore no longer being distracted by it, I must have become more open to finding the solution I needed.

I never avoided Teresa again. Grant you, I didn't seek her out either, but if she was there when I needed something checked, I asked her to check it and cheerfully fixed any problems she discovered.

A big surprise came at the end of the term when I turned in my last project. Teresa happened to be the supervisor in the lab at that time. She didn't even look at my work. She simply opened the grade book and marked the project as complete! As I stood there in astonishment, Teresa said "I don't have to check your work this time. You don't turn anything in unless it's well done."

Well, how about that!