Invaluable Advice by Josiah

Invaluable Advice by Josiah - April 2016 Scholarship Essay

The first piece of advice that I would give to younger students is that you need to decide what you want to do in this life. Remember when you were a kid, and your parents always asked you, “What do you want to do?” Well, we may laugh at it now, but that is the most important question you can ask yourself. The reason is that the sooner you know what you want to do the sooner you can invest your life entirely to that dream. You can be great at anything, just not everything; it has nothing to do with who your parents are, where you came from, but how hard you are willing to work. There are few disciplines in this life that will not submit their riches to a person who is truly determined to achieve their dreams. However, that means you must have a working idea of what that goal is that you want to attain. You need to be able to conceptualize the physical reality of achieving what you think is impossible and never give up!

As a runner, I have learned the importance of setting goals in my life. If I want to run a particular time for a one-mile race, then it is imperative that I know what that time is because how can I train if I do not know what I want. After I know what I want to achieve I arrange my training, and speed workouts to a time that corresponds to the time that I want to finish in. If you do not know what you want to do now, then I want to encourage you to spend thirty minutes to an hour a day and try to answer this question. What you will loose in time thinking about the answer to what you want to do you will make up in a lifetime of happiness and purpose.

My second most important piece of advice that I can give you is to do everything that you have been given, with excellence. Do not neglect the small responsibilities in your life. If that means cleaning your room, showing up for work, or doing your homework, do it all with excellence. The trivial parts of your life have significance in your life, and neglect of the small parts of your life leads many people to their ruin.

Furthermore, I believe that excellence in all your work is vital because the quality of work that you produce is a reflection of the kind of person you are. We live in a world full of people who talk about being great, but no one is doing the great work. If you truly want to separate yourself from all those talkers, then you must decide to do your work, and do your work with excellence. The single most significant difference that will make you stand out from the people around you is your ability to do what no else is willing to do. There are many today who do not want to do their work with excellence, but if you decide that you want to be different, and be truly unique, you must push yourself beyond your threshold. The minute you start to feel like you do not want to continue is the only moment that counts. Since in that moment of time when you feel like giving up, it will determine the kind of person your choosing to be for the rest of your life.

So let me encourage you when you are walking through those valleys of life where you are at the point of giving up to generate in yourself a drive that you will do your work with excellence. It will take hard work, but nothing is more rewarding and more liberating than knowing that you saw your responsibilities to the end. Once you have committed your life to excellence, you will have developed in your life one of conviction and the confidence to stand by what you say and to say it with boldness.

These are the two most important pieces of advice I would give to a younger student. First, decide what you want to do, and the second, do all your work with excellence. I guarantee you that everyone can do these two pieces of advice. And if you can take these two pieces of advice and apply them to your life I know you can do anything and be anyone you want to be.