Be Somebody.

Esther Yang
11/12/08
Period 3: English
7:10 PM


To be at the top, to be the most successful, and to be the best of what you can... you can't just leave everything to your minimum potential.
-You can't afford to call it done, when you can spend hours on it until you know you've tried your absolute best. Who cares if you lose sleep. Do your best anyways.
-You have to pour in all your effort, all your hard work, and focus. Be it the simplest of all things, or the most complex things you've ever dealt with. But one thing that'll always be true is that you have to be SOMEBODY to be the best.

To get accepted into a top college, let's say Stanford or Harvard, you can't lay around the couch all day and finish your homework. You can't hang out with your friends everyday and go catch a movie to kill some time. That won't even lead you to UW. Your application will only be ignored out of all the other thousands of applications from all across the world. Your path leads to a community college, so dream on. Getting straight A's is not enough to cover you for a university. You have to excel and be recognized in many things, with exceptional talent. And you can't excel in these things around your just in school. You have to think in a national scale, comparing the student in New York to you in Washington. Getting top grades and rewards are only the standards.

There is also a clear line between excelling in many things, and joining many things. To excel in many things, it means the person is exceptionally talented in those areas and are most likely passionate about it. Joining numerous clubs and other activities just to write it on your high school transcript is another useless strategy college admissioners know. Sorry folks, but that old trick doesn't make a difference or benefit you on your transcript.

Attack yourself with this question: Why do you want to go to Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, or Princeton. Why do you have to go there when there are thousands of other great colleges? Is it just the name & reputation? Is it the greed you have inside? Or is it really because you know they provide an excellent area of your major/interest? You see, people say that they want to go to an Ivy League college, when they don't know what every college is recognized for. Being accepted into an Ivy League college doesn't prove how far you go in life. It doesn't prove a man's worth. Chasing after an Ivy League college, but not knowing if they provide an excellent education for your major, is just the same as stripping away all your years of hard work and putting it in the dump, going after a blind dream.

Anyways, back on track. To excel in something, such as a sport, or musical ability, it takes practice.practice.practice. & patience. It doesn't take just a few months to excel in track, volleyball, the piano, violin, or whatever. It doesn't just take a couple practices.

An example of patience could be this: To find the "perfect" man/woman and to form a family, it takes time. You can't afford to marry the person that you have dated for only a few months. To spend the rest of your life with them, you have to evaluate and know them carefully in and out.


You see, it takes years, patience, willingness, and passion to be really good at something, and excel in it. It's all based on effort, and how you work your way up.

This is a lot to demand, from one single person, but it's all up to you, whether or not you will be that somebody. The usual slackers will give up now and the believers will either finish strong 'till the end or get tired & lose hope in the middle of this competition. But the head-strong group of people will never be willing to give up under any circumstance, and eventually beat everyone at the end. Which will you be?...

Everyone will try their best. Everyone will have the same greed, and willingness to do better than the person next to you. But are you willing to do even more than that person next to you? Are you willing to sacrifice more for what you want? The competition is on. But even though you're doing great right now... well you still have the same strength to thrive next year, the year after that.....?

There is no easy way out in life. There will always be obstacles, tough trials, and tests you have to experience to see if you're truly willing to go through all that to achieve what you want.

Although your 4 years of high school and college are the busiest times of your life and are very important, they do not prove whether or not you will be somebody in life.
But, it's based on how you apply these beliefs throughout your whole life, be it anywhere and anytime, because that's how life should be lived.


FYI:
This advice/Info. comes from parents, past middle school teachers, and cram school instructors. Thank you to those who have taught me so much. You have truly made a difference in my life, lifting me up in heavy, hopeless situations.