
My Philosophy
“You can only appreciate things that are fun after you work hard to achieve them.”
Fortune Cookie, 2000
My philosophy of life is that if you work hard enough, you will achieve the things you want. In other words, “Practice makes perfect.”
The feeling that you get from having fun is great, but it is important to work hard to achieve this “fun” thing. The feeling of having fun is irrelevant if hard work was not involved in achieving it. An example to illustrate this point is when someone begins a new sport. At first, you will be bad at the sport and will have a great deal of difficulty, but with hard work and a great deal of practice, improvement will become possible. I can relate this to my personal experiences with ice hockey. I had never played before this past October and had only skated four times in my life. From October until the season ended in March, I practiced every Monday and Wednesday. I felt that I was working very hard at getting better and by March, I could actually perform adequately and no longer embarrassed myself every time I go on the ice. I felt very good about my achievement in this sport.
Another example of feeling a sense of satisfaction from hard work happened from my last biology exam. I studied more than I had ever studied for a biology test before. Many hours of review were put into this particular unit of study. I studied both at home and in support class. The final product of all this effort was a 99 percent on my test. Never before did I do this well on any test. The feeling I had when Mrs. Wysocki handed me back my test was fantastic. I felt a true sense of achievement because of all the time and effort I put into studying.
My third and final example of feeling a sense of satisfaction from hard work happened last year in baseball. I wasn’t the fastest kid on the team, or the longest hitter, and I didn’t have an exceptionally strong throwing arm, but I had a lot of heart and luck. I worked hard every practice (like in hockey), and I started to improve all my skills. By the end of the season I was a pretty well rounded ballplayer, and I became the best outfielder on my team (I had 5 sliding catches, and 4 diving catches). Since my team pulled together so well, we made it to the playoffs. The first team that we played was amazing; they were undefeated in the regular season. We played a long hard fought game, and we went into extra innings. The other team scored two runs, and then since we were the home team we got a chance to bat. I was the fifth batter up, a man on first and third, and with two outs and two strikes against me (imagine the pressure), the pitch was perfect and I hammered it into deep center. I ran the fastest that I have ever ran before, men on first and third scored, so my coach gave me the stop sign (like I’d listen), but kept on running. The outfielder threw it to the cut off man, who then threw it home to the catcher. It was just me and the catcher now (just imagine what my coach must’ve been thinking during this). I ran full speed and delivered an enormous body check to the catcher, which caused the ball to fly out of his mitt, and then the ump shouted “SAFE!!!” My whole team ran onto the field and picked me up at home plate, I was so proud. I’m not sure but until this day, I think that my dad was so proud that his eyes were filled with tears of joy.
In my mind, my philosophy couldn’t be more true. If you work hard and practice a lot, you’ll get better at something, and then you have a lot of fun doing it.
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