Curiosity Is A Trait That All Humans Share

Over the 12-year span of my swimming career, I faithfully trusted my coaches when they told me competitive swimming would take me places. At six-years-old, I dreamed of competing in the Summer Olympics, winning a gold medal, and seeing my face on the cover of a Wheaties box. However, at six-years-old, I never envisioned the mental and physical roller coaster that would define my future in the sport. I would experience numerous mental blocks and physical plateaus; I would sometimes go months and even years without achieving a best time; and I would win very few races, especially for the amount of effort I put into my nine practices each week. In high school, I grew frustrated, I doubted both my coaches and myself, and I contemplated quitting more times than I can count. But I kept swimming, hoping that each stroke and each lap would lead to the success that I sought to achieve. Then in 2014, undoubtedly the most frustrating year of my swimming career, I realized that swimming was so much more than just an extracurricular activity for me. It had become a lifestyle that streamlined me into the person I am today: dedicated, driven, and loyally interdependent.

When I was five years old, I joined the Carroll Aquatic Swim Team. I stuck with it because I loved being underwater, feeling the refreshing water all over and the sensation of touching the wall, finishing first hearing the people holler. When I got older I just didn’t have much care for it. So, I decided that I wanted to give up. Then, my mom told me that I should finish the season than I could determine, nevertheless, I did as I was told. At my last meet, my mom signed me up to swim the IM which is when you swim all four strokes. I was convinced that I couldn’t do it because I had never done it before. I told my mom that I couldn’t and I would fail, but my friend convinced me that I should do it. She told me that I would only disappoint people if I gave up; consequently, I swam and received first place. In conclusion, I ended up feeling the same exciting feeling as when I was five.

Athletics had not always been a flauntable aspect of my life as they are now. In grades 1-4, I was uncoordinated and far too lanky to produce and store any muscle. I often ponder about what changed in the fifth grade, for I became very agile and have exercised almost every day since the beginning of that year. I did not pick up the sport of swimming until the seventh grade and I cannot imagine myself not swimming, not only as a source of exercise but as a source of pure pleasure.

Honestly ever since I was two years old I have been in water, and learned how to swim at around three. I had not learned anything about swimming in Wheeling High School and I can prove that I did not benefit from the swimming sessions. I had already known survival techniques such as not panicking in water and floating on my back to save energy. I already had common sense of not using drugs because I could drown. I had known that many college students go to Lake Michigan at night and die because they can't see or are drunk. To be honest I knew all of these rules but feel maybe Wheeling high school had re-emphasized all of them. I will try to use these techniques at my pool in Florida and continue to teach others how to swim.

Then, something in my mind sparked, as if I had storage of unseen strength. I looked at the bottom of the pool, and I saw a flashback of when I first learned how to swim two years before, at the age of fourteen. I had all of these visions of successes in the past regarding life around aquatics and realized that giving up this opportunity would be like giving up everything that I had worked so hard for.

Growing up, my family valued experiences over material possessions, a lesson my parents learned from their parents who immigrated the U.S. without jobs or living arrangements. When I was only three years old, my parents took me to the public pool and gave me my first swimming lessons. My chubby limbs splashed around as I tried to keep my head above water. With practice, I began swimming competitively when from the age of 10 until my junior year of high school. I enjoyed the competitive nature of the sport and performing simple movements against the resistance of the water. Under the water there is a serenity and calmness not subject to the laws of gravity. When I was forced to stop swimming competitively due to my rheumatoid arthritis, I found

For the majority of those seconds, I have reflected upon my choices. However, there is one choice that has greatly influenced my life- the choice to swim. At the age of three, my instructor dunked me underwater after I refused to swim. The suffocating experience of not having control over my own body traumatized me. I became so afraid of the water that I refused to swim for a year. Seven years later, I decided to overcome my fear by joining the swim team and I have been swimming ever since. Every time I get on the block to race, my anxiety comes back and I am paralyzed with fear. I have to rely on the strength of my teammates get in the water and swim, not just for the team, but for myself. Words cannot even describe how accomplished I feel when I touch the wall at the end of a race. This determination to face my fears has carried through to other aspects of my life; swimming has brought me great friends, a lifeguarding job, and valuable reflection

Swimming on the Varsity swim team for the past 4 years has taught me many invaluable life lessons. Most of these lessons can be attributed to not only surviving, but thriving, in difficult circumstances.

Interest-The Curious Emotion is an academic paper that answers what the concept of interest is and more importantly what makes something interesting. The author, Paul Silvia, does this using research done in the field of psychology. The psychology of interest has been researched as far back as the 1800s. Interest is an important concept because interest plays a role in the growth of knowledge and expertise. Interest is classified as an emotion in emotion psychology because interest has the components of emotion as classified by modern theories of emotion. These components consist of “physiological changes, facial and vocal expressions, patterns of cognitive appraisal, a subjective feeling, and an adaptive role across the lifespan”(Silvia). The expressions noted for interest involved the movements in the muscles in the forehead and eyes used when concentrating. Also, people were found that they tilt the head when interested.

My path with swimming was littered with many triumphs and extremely dramatic failures. The summer of 2014 had been one of the most spectacular defeats for me by losing a championship by 0.01. As I set myself up for the next summer of 2015, I didn’t want to focus on anything except not making a fool of myself in front of hundreds of people.

Several years ago I took a swimming class at the Lakeshore in Carrollton, Georgia. I took the classes because my parents forced me to.They didn't want me to bored at home . At that time, I was about twelve years old thinking what's the point of taking a swimming class. I really did not want to take the class because I thought I already knew how to swim, and I thought it was a waste of time.

Or, rather, I had never tried to swim. I had this burning desire to enter the water and swim, but my fear of drowning was totally halting this whole process. But, finally, after about a year of fighting this internal battle, I won. I held my breath, jumped in, and before I knew it, I was swimming. Even at this young age, I understood how foolish it was for me to have been afraid to take this risk towards something I really wanted. From that day forward, I began to attack my fears, rather than cower from them.

“What is the definition of failure?” I always thought the failure was my destiny, but I never tried to define it from another standpoint. With a deep consideration, I utilized the failure from the first competition to motivate myself to continue my swimming career. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect, so I devoted to swimming every day ever since. I strived to reach beyond my limit with strict practices, such as 100 yards freestyle sprint, 200 yards freestyle, 500 yards freestyle. The pain of my exhausted body after the practices didn’t stop me, and it rather encouraged me to continue to break my limit and overcome the fear I still had. Moving forward, my feeling of fear disappeared as I became more skillful and confident. Through swimming,

When I first joined the swim team, I lacked in both confidence and skill. Although our coach trained us rigorously her persistence and with the team’s guidance, I began to improve. They inspired me to work harder and to push over my limit and with their support I had begun to rely

Curiosity reflects an essential desire for new information to inspire interest and/or ignore uncertainty, which is aroused by novel, complex, and therefore can motivate exploratory behavior (Litman et al., 2005). There are four type diverse type of curiosity that had found from researchers which is perceptual, epistemic, sensory, and interpersonal.