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What Is Work Worth Doing Essay

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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

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