Day 21 by Jonathan

Day 21 by Jonathan - March 2018 Scholarship Essay

I have an offer for you. I will give you a lifetime supply of yummy food. In order to get this prize, you need to complete a challenge. You CANNOT eat any junk food for a whole MONTH. No soda. No chips. No cookies. No candy. Nothing. Doesn’t seem too hard right? All you need to do is work hard for a month and you’ll be able to enjoy the benefits of your efforts for the rest of your life! Hey, if you play it smart, you can figure out ways to make the month go by a little easier for yourself too! I just said a month, not 31 days, so you can pick February instead of August, you could save yourself almost 10% of the work! Let’s say you decide to take me on in this challenge. The first week goes by. It’s hard but your goal is still fresh in your mind and you know how great life will be when you finish. Another week passes and you are seeing your friends bringing Nutella sandwiches and Doritos for lunch. What do you think they would do if I gave them this challenge too, do you think they would do it? It would probably be pretty nice to have all the good food whenever you want instead of just one or two times a week when their parents decide to give it to them. You decide to keep going without junk food.
It’s day 21. You are just 7 days away from completing the challenge! You are also in class on International Pizza Day, the one day of the school year that your teacher is going to throw a party and bring pizza, cookies and soda for you and your friends to enjoy! This is most important day. All of your friends are enjoying some of your favorite foods while you’re waiting for some promise from a random guy on the internet that could just be lying to you; what if 30 days of eating no junk food won’t actually give you a lifetime of yummy food? This is where some people decide to give up on my challenge. I’m stepping in right now as a reminder. You have already gone 20 full days without eating any junk food! If you take a bite out of that pizza right now, all of your hard work towards this big goal is going to be gone to waste. You have the chance to free yourself from all the stress you developed from doing this challenge and get immediate short-term pleasure from all the good food but then you’ll be back to eating the good food only once a week when your parents say its ok. Are you really going to let all of your sacrifice go for nothing when you’re so close to completing the challenge?
Congratulations. You’ve decided to keep going, and you are proud of yourself for not giving up, so the days pass by quickly. You even begin to feel pretty good inside about not eating junk food because it’s a little reminder of the big decision you made on day 21! Finally, the challenge is completed! You have earned yourself a lifetime’s worth of delicious food! It must feel pretty great, you realize that your investment of effort has provided you with a reward you can cherish for the rest of your life!
Well guess what, a challenge like this exists in real life and the prize is MUCH bigger than just tasty food! You’ll get some of your best friends completing this challenge! You’ll be able to become the astronaut, doctor, or whatever it is you want to become! You’ll become extremely smart and skilled in your favorite subject! You’ll also be much more likely to be able to treat yourself to the best foods and experiences whenever you want instead of once a month when the check in the mail says its okay! However, this challenge has many more benefits than my first one so it’ll take longer than the first to complete. But what if I told you that you’re already making progress on this challenge, and that you’re already on track to make it to “Day 21!” Pretty crazy right? Well this real-life challenge is your education! Many of your friends are going to make it to “Day 21” and graduate high school, and there’s not much out there to do besides school before then, so it shouldn’t be too bad to keep going until then. But when you reach “Day 21,” you’re going to notice a lot of people you grew close to going in many different directions. Sadly, a couple of them are going to give up on the challenge. But like the first challenge, “Day 21” is the most important day, not the day you finish the challenge. “Day 21” is the day when you decide whether you are going to make all of your hard work be worth the effort. Once you make this important decision to keep going, the last little bit of time you will spend in college will fly by quicker than you’d expect, leading you straight to the end of the challenge! It may seem difficult at times, but hey if winning the first small challenge could be that exciting, imagine how great it will be to complete the big challenge?