Work Worth Doing
People distract themselves, often to cope or avoid emotional setbacks and feelings of fear. I am one of those people. I poured all of my energy into one objective, twisting the values that my parents had instilled in me and taking advantage of everything they had provided. In fifth grade, I had encountered a quote by Theodore Roosevelt, “Far and away, the best prize life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” This led me to believe what was most significant to me: schoolwork--it was my interpretation of “work worth doing.” By distracting myself from being consumed by my negative thoughts, I believed that my life was going well. Everything revolved around school. Rather than attending family dinners and doing chores that my parents had instructed me to do, I would make excuses to stay home or procrastinate on my duties as a family member. At first, they were rather lenient about me doing so. My classmates and I were always stressed throughout middle and high school because of homework assignments and projects we were given. I devoted my time to it, genuinely wanting to learn and understand. As the pressures to be a leader and to succeed heightened because of my Asian identity, I found myself burnt out. In a particularly stressful week during my freshman year of high school, I neglected cleaning my room, unloading the dishwasher, and folding the laundry. Little did I know that my parents had the last straw. My eyes closed, almost as
I have a passionate desire to excel in my academic life. My early elementary school years were arduous because I have always been a very stubborn person; and at the time, I had simply decided I did not want to go to school. However, about halfway through my 1st grade year, I decided that I could no longer go without giving my best academically and I turned my stubborn rebellion against school into a
I became fully aware of the fact that some kids can't focus on schoolwork because they may be too consumed with a difficult home environment. Some people use drugs as an outlet for severe depression and anxiety, and they see it as the only way out of the pain and suffering. Others may dress or act differently as a way to express themselves when no one else listens. Some of these people are not worried about what grade they got on their math test - they’re worried about real, difficult life issues that they have to face every day.
Throughout most of my early life, I had always wanted to challenge myself, especially from an academics standpoint. For the most part, it seemed like it was not all that difficult; that the path to succeeding in these advanced classes would not be too stressing. But this view would drastically change during my sophomore year. It was only my second year in high school, and the very busy schedule with advanced classes hit me hard. Certainly, this life required someone with a hard work ethic, great discipline, and very good time management; honestly, however my 15 year old self was not well equipped for the challenge. Also during this year, I worked hard and placed myself on varsity basketball, which proved to be very time consuming and demanding. Balancing the arduous schedule of varsity basketball, string orchestra, and advanced academic classes
I had and till this day have maintained a perfect clean discipline record. My priority was always school until i started High School. High School has been rough for me, not because of the kids or people in my school but because of life situations that have surpassed my life . I remember waking up in the mornings ready to learn but concentration was nearly impossible for me, especially in certain classes like science and mathematics. I have always been the girl who no matter what the situation is has maintained a smile and a positive attitude towards things. No one knew what was going on inside of me but i did because it had reflected in those classes in which all my concentration was necessary. I was confused and didn't know how to react to what was happening to me, i was scared to tell my parents and my desperation was just too much. Sophomore year continued the same until i joined my schools youth court program of which till this day i am a founding volunteer member. Youth court is a program that involved training youth like me to represent , defend and prosecute peers who have been
Over the summer break, my mom had accidentally thrown out my summer homework that I had labored for days over. Despite the fact that I was fuming with anger, I asked myself, “If I don’t redo the packet by tonight, will I be satisfied?” My answer was no. I stayed up until two in the morning redoing the packet, but it was worth it. No matter how miserable I was that night, it was exponentially better than the feeling of anxiety that would loom over my head during my last few days of summer vacation. Knowing myself, I would have constantly thought about it as the impending due date neared if it wasn’t finished yet.
My grades were going down beacuse I always got home late from practice. I was so occupied with baseball that I never focused at school. “How can you play if you can’t focus during scool.” This time, my dad said it in a depressed way while walking out of my room. He got tired of raising hs voice. I looked at myself in the mirror and promised to fix myself, day by day, to become an example of being a student athlete. The following day, I took a lot of notes, asked questions, worked with my teachers after school when I needed help, and I never fell asleep before completing all of my homework. Things immediately picked up with my grades and baseball. I still carry out these habits until now. With all the hardships that I have been going throughout my highschool career, my work ethic is still strong. I continue my endeavors to become a star student and an outstanding baseball player, even if my schedule is full. As people had brought me down in the past, I am now grateful of their opinions. I was able to stop slacking on what’s important. I learned that life has given me obstacles so that I would be the prime example of what I promised myself to
Throughout my first semester, I kept telling myself that I'm gonna get my work done , i'm gonna go to class , but i never kept my word. Instead of going to school I either hung out with friends or I worked. I thought I would be able to work , go to school and still have a social life.
I’ve always struggled with trying to stay focused on my school work. While it may not look like it on the outside, it is a constant struggle in the inside. My mind is like a jungle gym with a bunch of kids zooming around. Sometimes I would just stare at the screen of my computer hoping the words would just appear themselves, but if that ever happened I probably wouldn’t even be here. My brain has these switches in them to tell me to do something else like play a game on your tablet or watch Netflix right when I am writing my essay. It’s how my brain works, and there never seems to be a manual switch because it’s automatic. My lack of focus caused me to face many obstacles, but through my weaknesses I discovered some of my greatest
As an adolescent I had many birth issues and illnesses including asthma. These issues had kept me out of school, giving me less time to learn the basics of reading, writing, and math. Because my mother coached varsity volleyball at Novi High School, most of my childhood was spent in the gym. My father did not always have the best grades, in fact high school was the same for both of us; however, as he continued to college he had increased his study habits and earned himself over a 3.0 GPA. My two sisters are both really school smart, and then there was me, the one who struggled with school. In my Junior year my father got sick and I was on constant worry about my family and how he was doing. School became harder for me to focus on because of this issue and none of my teachers helped me out with the number of assignments. Family was always first with us, then it was education and school, and continued off with friends and fun such as sports.
Throughout my time at Chelan High School, I faced many challenges when it came to my homework and it took me nearly my whole high school career to realize how to fix it. The problem was how unmotivated and lazy I was when it came to have to complete my homework. Looking back at it now it seems that the solution was so simple, and it is frustrating that it took me so long to be able to self-motivate myself. It turns out that this responsibility was a habit of mind. This habit of mine helped me very effectively and completely changed how I went about doing all my school work and studying.
After my early 9:00 a.m. Philosophy recitation I headed towards the elevators to head back down to the first floor. I slowly drug my sleep-deprived body to the 10A bus that took me to my dormitory hall up the hill. Once I finally arrived at my room, I sat down at my desk to start on my schoolwork that would surely take hours to complete. Looking into my pages of notes, I started to question myself on why I am doing all of this repetitive, seemingly unnecessary work. My homework consisted of Calculus problems that required me to find the derivative of extremely long functions, and I realized I am not benefiting anything from completing these tedious equations. Some of the answers to the problems required a whole page to write the answer
A particular stressful situation that occurred within the last year was my unrealistic goal to become Personal Trainer certified through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) in three-months (over the summer). What made this goal difficult was the fact that it took me a long time each day to finally sit down before my book to study, there were days I had to take care of my grandma in place of her other caregiver, spending too much time at the gym, wasting time on the computer, wasting time on my phone and on social media, and consecutive days where I pushed studying off. All of these points really made focusing on studying hard. Each day my intentions were to get to work and work hard, but just the thought of being in the action of studying repelled me from sitting down and doing so. In all honesty, some days were easier than others, but the majority weren’t as so. To add to all of this, I had the pressure of the promise I’d made to so many people of being certified before starting this last semester of college. Given this goal I had for myself, and knowing that getting focused on the work each day wouldn’t be easy, I had a select few hold me accountable for getting my studying done. The support systems I had in place were my mom, girlfriend at the time, and my dentist, who I was training at night, five-days a week. My mom was definitely the one who was on my case the most about how much I’d gotten done each day—she’d ask every day after work. She was
Every morning I wake up searching my bed for my phone. Flipping sheets and pillows until my phone appears. I lay back in bed and check my Facebook, Snapchat and Reddit. Telling myself that i'll get out of bed in fifteen minutes but I get absorbed into my phone and that fifteens minutes turn into thirty minutes. I start to do the rest of chemistry homework but in five minutes I lose my concentration and I reach for my phone without thinking. I end up doing my homework last minute before class. I always tell myself that I got to do my homework right after school. But that never happens because the same thing that always happens in the morning, Its a endless cycle. While I was typing up this essay, I thought of batman and went to Netflix and watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Five hours wasted that i could've used for homework. Some people self diagnose themselves with ADHD and blame their attention span and willingness to learn on ADHD. I blame it on the internet and ourselves.
I learned quickly the way of life: waking up early and walking to school in the dark for morning Water Polo practices. After a long day of challenging classes, I went back to the pool, exhausted, but pushed myself until I came home at seven each night. Dad wouldn’t be home for hours and there was no food ready for either of us. Studying on an empty stomach with no time to cook made it difficult to concentrate and stay on top of school work. Unfortunately, having a meal and getting adequate rest for both my brain and body was never a
I was once a problematic kid who mixed with bad company and flunk tests. I never thought about what I was going to do the next day, what more when I grew up. Of course when I was younger, I had lots of dreams. I wanted to set up my own company, I wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to be able to drive an airplane and the list went on. But as the years went by, they became less insignificant to me and soon, I forgot every single one of those dreams and goals. I got to a new school and knew friends who smoke and took drugs. My grades started dropping from “A” to fails. But I did not care. I could not be bothered by then. I went partying every night and got home drunk. What was the point of studying? My parents are