Puzzling Out Achievement by Joy

Puzzling Out Achievement by Joy - July 2021 Scholarship Essay

It’s fortunate I have great mentors to the point that picking an unexpected, yet useful, lesson in club or school is hard. When faced with the question of what was learned in an unanticipated message, I found a commonality. Many of them had me discerning notions and behaviors I should observe after a philosophical discussion on subjects like success or gratitude. Therefore, I decided to describe the moment when such accumulated knowledge just clicked in the context of achievement.

My epiphany came from a lesson taught the year before last by my year-round, private swim club coach. The lesson was composed of a thrilling tale about a cross-country road trip and a talk on how the story connected to training like an Olympian. This experience counts as unexpected since a road trip didn’t seem to connect to swimming until it was explained. Anyway, I thought I learned two notions from the lesson: to be bold and to be focused. Thus, when the coach asked for the swimmers’ insights into the matter, I concluded, “Life success cannot happen without being bold - in relationships, in action, and in opportunity – through discomfort, and being focused in these pursuits.” Then he followed with the questions, why I had seen that in the story; and, what does that mean in practical matters. I was speechless because the why and how felt so obvious, yet so hard to point out.

Those follow-up questions were unanswerable because my conclusion had come from the totality of my comprehensions rather than that instance, that lesson. Time after time, I would pull on the knowledge that was unrelated to the lesson which I had answered but worked to explain why I said what I said. That process of linking content and thoughts on past discoveries also made summarizing the practical application of the answer difficult. Repeatedly being unable to find the answers to the follow-up questions made me mad. Thus, I tracked down the reason why the sought for answers were insoluble: I was putting the totality of my comprehensions into an all-encompassing perceptive and synthesizing them, not truly adding new knowledge. So, I couldn’t show why I had learned what I concluded in the story nor summarize the practical application for what was concluded since my understanding was source-less and increasing with every thought.
Knowing I was going through a series of random realizations made me anxious to find if, how, and what, they connected. It was the suffocating feeling of knowing something was supposed to be pieced together, like a puzzle, but the result and how were unknown. Eventually, I saw that everything I was thinking was related to creating and defining achievement. Basically, my mind was unconsciously creating a construct of success and how accomplishments are made. That discovery lifted the smothering sensation and gave me a framework that made piecing the realizations together easier. Honestly, it was like being told this is the picture the puzzle is supposed to display when I found my thoughts were making a philosophy on achievement, its definition, and its creation in the world.

I immediately fleshed out the puzzle by putting down the pieces of central knowledge I knew and some of the cornerstone ideology on which I was basing my construct of achievement. Then I started to sort out the pieces of knowledge in my head by clarifying what they were. I thought about the elements that all accomplishments have and what separates the bad ones from the good ones. I thought of how relationships interact with people’s feats and affect the individual’s aspiration for success. I kept defining each piece of understanding and then recording the specifics of each one, so I could have one solid piece of a theory. Then I combined those pieces to create a small theory and pieced those theories together to create a broad outline, philosophy, of my version of success. That took me about a week; yet, the picture was not as clear as I hoped and helped me emotionally realize that success is never finished.

Since then, I have not stopped adding more pieces and theories to the outline. I expect to be able to form a picture of success, and its methods, to know exactly what I want to achieve and how. Then, I hope to have an extensive understanding of achievement to be objective enough to pass it to others. Right now, the picture is dyed with my colors (experiences and biases) and is missing pieces. So, college is a critical step in my endeavor of understanding achievement. It introduces students to diverse outlooks, gives students access to dissimilar peers, and provides expansive resources. Additionally, it helps others explore what they want to do, what they find important, and what they will do to be successful. I hope to learn from others’ experiences as much as I do my own. I want to be able to place ideas and new concepts onto my outline and fit other influences into the picture. Perhaps I will disassemble some theories once I discover new pieces of knowledge, or expand my picture of success, but I know that every piece of information is clarifying my philosophy on achievement. The college will turn this outline of success into a sketch and I aspire to use the colorful experiences of others to make the puzzle picture reflect success for me and for others.