Genius is Ninety Percent Sweat. by Alexandra

Genius is Ninety Percent Sweat. by Alexandra - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

The lessons we learn throughout our lives form the person that we are today and will become in the future. These lessons can be taught or just learned from anyone, whether or not that was the intention. One of the most important lessons I have ever learned in my life was from my middle school choir teacher, “Genius is ninety percent sweat.” This lesson confused me then, however, as I’ve grown, it has been words to live by.
As any lesson, this one may have had a different meaning to me than it did to someone else. To me, this meant that everything that you have to achieve has to have hard work and dedication behind it. As anything you may do in life, you have to work extremely hard to achieve your goal, sometimes for a very long amount of time. This simple lesson has taught me just how much work has to be put into things that you may want to achieve in life.
This simple phrase can be applicable in many circumstances. The first example is school work. When completing work, the goal is to retain the information and complete the assignment to get the highest grade that you can achieve. This goal cannot be achieved merely by just knowing the information, it requires a lot of work and action behind it to be able to successfully complete your task. Another example of this is my achievements in archery. In my freshman year of high school, I got extremely interested in archery but did not make the team. After that, I decided to spend a lot of my spare time working on becoming a better archer. By the time my sophomore year came around, I was prepared for tryouts for the team and successfully made it. Throughout all of the time I have been participating in archery, I have accomplished a lot and improved drastically. I still continue to work to improve myself in hopes that I can medal in my senior year state competition. This hard work can be applied to many other situations, including sports, work, personal achievements, and many other situations. All accomplishments cannot merely be solved by knowledge, but must also be accomplished through hard work and dedication.
This lesson has personally impacted the way that I approach different obstacles in my life. Before fully understanding this lesson, I used to believe that I would be able to do the bare minimum and be able to succeed. As I transitioned into high school, I discovered that this was absolutely not the case. In my first year, I learned more so than ever that if I wanted to obtain the highest grades, succeed in my aspirations, or do anything to further myself; I was going to need to put a lot of work behind my knowledge. I hope to use this lesson to better myself in the challenging college years that are going to be soon approaching me by reminding myself that a part of showing my genius includes ‘sweating’ to obtain it.
Looking back at the time that my teacher told me those words, I wish I knew exactly how significant the impact they would have on me would be. “Genius is ninety percent sweat” is the most important lesson I have ever learned and will be a phrase that I will continue living by for many years to come.