9,999 obstacles to Success by Emma

9,999 obstacles to Success by Emma - September 2014 Scholarship Essay

When Thomas Edison created the light bulb, it took him thousands of attempts. A reporter gave him grief and asked him how it felt to fail 10,000 times. Edison replied, “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

When I was eight years old I struggled immensely in school. I was keeping an average of a 70 and was on the brink of failing. When I brought my report cards home, my dad’s anger was the wrath of a revengeful volcano. He’d tell me only A’s were acceptable and I would be punished. Every day I feared school because at the end of my day, I was afraid my grades would not meet his expectations, or worse, slip.

When I was eleven and still struggling, my dad’s anger erupted worse than before. I remember crying in my room with my eyes swollen and my chest caving from exhaustion and stress. My mom opened the door softly. I felt her weight adjust the bed, though I did not look her in the eyes but directly at the floor.

“If you try your hardest, your very hardest, I will not be mad,” she told me. “From now on, you will only show your report card to me. If you get an A or an F, I will not be upset as long as I see you try. If you try, that’s an A plus to me.” She then kissed my forehead and left the room.

When I went to school, I no longer felt the anxiety of my grades. Instead, I focused on my mom’s standard. If I tried, I could not fail. Eventually, I was no longer trying for my mom, but for myself. I no longer compared my scores to others, but to my own past grades.

I have been a straight A student for a decade now and I have a 4.0 in college. I am not a genius, I am far from it. I had to work very hard to get where I am today, which is not from natural wit, but from trying.
Trying is a skill because you have to expertise the will to try again. If the result is to fail, you cannot allow failure into your heart. You must learn to strengthen from it and you must learn how to speculate from your own mistakes and turn a failure into a lesson.

Even if it takes 9,999 times to fail, the ability to try one more time just might change the world.