A Better Tomorrow by Austin

A Better Tomorrow by Austin - January 2016 Scholarship Essay

After my junior football season, I decided to be the best I could be. A year prior to my senior season, I began to dedicate myself to become the best football player I could be. In less than a year, I gained 15 pounds of muscle and became known as a “freak in the weight room,” according to the local newspaper. I went on to be elected as team captain, rush for 900 yards, receive for around 400, score 12 touchdowns, and became a first team all-district offensive and defensive player.
I say all this not to brag, but to prove a point. The success everybody observed did not just appear, but it was a result of extreme amounts of hard work and dedication.The mentality of working hard today to be better tomorrow is what made me such a successful football player.
New Year’s resolutions are nothing more than hope for some people. They give people high goals for the fresh year ahead, but sadly enough, they most often die out too soon to be effective. My New Year’s resolution is not so much a goal, but a challenge: What I do today can improve all of my tomorrows.
How can this help me become a better student? The ways in which it can help me are endless. Too often I find myself wanting to do things which lead to temporary satisfaction, temporary happiness, and temporary relaxation; these are not the things that will help me in the future. What I want is long term satisfaction, long term happiness, and long term relaxation. This challenge will help me daily to work hard to better my future. It will help me to work harder, study harder, and go the extra mile so the next day is easier.
Procrastination is an easy answer for many students, including myself sometimes. It seems like the short term answer, but in reality, it is only putting the procrastinator in a position for more struggle and stress. By thinking about my future, and my New Year challenge, I know that I will have more motivation to not make excuses. I believe this resolution would greatly help to alleviate current stress and prevent future stress.
Another problem often found with slacking is the sudden accumulation of work due in short time. Procrastinating can often lead to a large build up, often making it very difficult or impossible to do it all in sufficient time. I believe that by simply telling myself that hard work today is necessary to be better tomorrow, I can motivate myself to do all the necessary work at the right time.
I think being a successful student is not something suddenly achieved, but something that accumulates through hours, days, and years of hard work. Being a good student is easy, but being the best student possible requires great dedication, perseverance and motivation. My New Year’s Resolution is to work hard today, to make myself better tomorrow. If this challenge is considered daily, then the possibilities of success for myself are endless. I believe that this resolution will help me to become the best student I could possibly be.
There is no personal motivation more powerful than self conviction. Knowing what’s right, yet doing what’s wrong. It has a way of eating at me, gnawing subconsciously. The little voice in my head saying “do the homework, and do it now” or “push through the drowsiness and study.” All too often I find myself trying to justify why I feel the need to slack in school, whether it be from football practice, track practice, or other excuses such as wanting to hangout with friends, or sleep. This is the reason behind my resolution. No matter how good the excuse may seem at the time, the feeling in my gut is always true to what is best in the future. In order to be successful tomorrow, hard work must be done today.