Never Give Up by Jessica

Never Give Up by Jessica - November 2013 Scholarship Essay

“I quit!” these are the two words that I have never said through my high school career, even though I hear it all around me; in my classes, in the halls during passing period, and sometimes at home. When I hear a class mate or one of my family members say these words I think to myself what would happen if I said that about school or any activity I do. But then instantly I realize that I would be a failure; a loser, someone who basically gives up on life, and strives to have no future or a career in anything. I definitely want to succeed in my life and to have an amazing career in the medical field and that’s years of challenging education, if I were to suddenly give up what would I do? It would be a waste of time and money I am not going to stop on my dreams just because a math problem. During my high school years I have been challenged in many things from being on the Junior Varsity girls’ basketball team, taking an active part in various school projects, and my grades.

During my freshman year of high school I made the Moorpark girls’ Junior Varsity basketball team and I was challenged in many different ways. First of all our team was simply terrible. There were many girls on our team that were inexperienced just placed there because they were juniors not ready to move on the varsity team, or many of the girls in this case just did not care, they played to get the sports credit. Then there was another group of girls who were not willing to work together as a team, they were all in it to either to look like the super star, which did not work out because they were not that good, or they were just in their own clique. Being a freshman with upper class men I did not know what to expect because I was the new girl playing with the bigger girls who have known each other for a while. Then there was my coach who was really mean to the girls, he would belittle us and just be very harsh with us and also despite all of this he was a terrible coach. As we played a few more games at the start of the season we began to lose every single game, and after the games there would be such negativity and everyone would be mad at each other and after a while it got old so I decided there should be some change. I decided that we shouldn’t say at the start of the game, we are going to lose what’s the point of trying. Now even though we might lose we should not give up and try our best. As time passed with this new attitude that was developed the cliques started to disappear and despite losing every single game of the season we became a close knit team. Even though we lost we still had fun and at the end of the season I got the coach’s award for my hard work, dedication, and being the most inspirational player of the year. I got this award because I taught my basketball team to never give up.

At my high school I am have been a member of the Health Science Academy for all four years. In this academy we are assigned a semester group project that is a large part of our semester grade. We are assigned group projects with random people or the people of our choosing to prepare us to work with different types of people in the future. Last year we were able to choose our groups and the project was interesting and a lot of work, but the problem was that every single person did their job but this one person. So as the deadline for this project approached we didn't know what to do. So then I decided that I would just finish her part of the project. So in this case I learned to take the leadership role to finish our project to prevent the feelings of giving up.

Another example of never giving up has to deal with the constant battle of keeping my grades up. I never leave studying until the last minute on tests and when I do get a bad grade I feel guilty for not studying harder. Only three times in my high school career I have only gotten 3 C’s. I wanted to cry because my GPA was now tarnished with 3 C’s, and I put so much effort and time into my grades, I was devastated. But then despite this I never gave up on my studies and I only wanted to improve it. High school has taught me never to give up on anything that I have encountered; this will benefit me in my future because my future is bright and requires lots of hard work and dedication.