The Journey of Success by Cameron

The Journey of Success by Cameron - February 2021 Scholarship Essay

I have learned that success is not merely accomplishing goals. It is the measurement of how well something is accomplished. At least, this is my definition of success. It is not enough for me to get a college degree and tell myself that I am successful. I see a lot of people going to college to find themselves or to get a piece of paper to hand to a company that says, “I’m good enough to work here.”
Success in college is the ability to focus on the path I set before myself to reach my goal. It might be a long road but if I push forward, I will reach my goal. How I define the goal changes how I pave the road of success. What the road is made from changes the journey dramatically. I can set the goal of simply finishing college to get my degree. To me, that is a dirt road. Dirt is not pretty but it gets the job done. I would finish but what would have I to show for it? Objectives are ways to focus and reach the goal with more intent. Good grades may be an objective but if all I do is memorize answers, how can I problem solve in the real world? An example of a clear objective is, “I must have the ability to tell professors why I chose the answers I chose with a logical and educated backing.” Clear objectives and specific tasks serve as landmarks along the path of success.
If I define my goal with clear objectives and tasks along the way, I have paved a thing of beauty. I will have reached my goal with the ability to look back at the journey and tell people everything that had happened along the way. Landmarks are in place, memories are made, and knowledge is secured. Success in college is not telling a future employer, “I finished, that counts for something,” but rather, telling them, “here is what I know, and here is how I have applied what I know.”
In some cases, success may be labeled as simply finishing a task. I choose to define success as how well a task is completed. I ask how many mistakes were made and how can I fix them for the next time. If a task is completely mutilated but I have learned something along the way, there is a degree of success there. Success is all-encompassing. It is about pushing through the hard times, not just to get through them, but to learn from them. Success is not wholly about the end goal but the journey it took to get there.