“When you give your all, stay to enjoy your victory lap” by Keon

“When you give your all, stay to enjoy your victory lap” by Keon - November 2018 Scholarship Essay

My senior quote would be, “When you give your all, stay to enjoy your victory lap.” I attend Smoky Hill High School, in Aurora, Co. At Smoky Hill, we have a academic program called International Baccalaureate, IB for short, it is the most rigorous course in the school. IB is commonly referred as “AP classes on steroids” indicating the level of difficulty, to some extent this is true. The degree of difficulty is somewhat harder than AP classes in the aspect of analyzing every subject to a deeper level; extensive projects such as extended essay, personal project, internal assessments, external assessments; 150 hours of community service.
Because IB is so rigorous there have been many students who have dropped out of the program, freshman year we had about 140 students and now senior year we have about 48 students left in the program. I am currently in the IB program and it makes me feel heartbroken to see students trying their best for IB and then dropping out because it’s hard. I live by the philosophy that, if you work hard you deserve to play hard, these IB students worked their butts off and they deserve recognition for their efforts but when they drop out, it’s as if they never worked their butts off in the first place. Referring back to the quote if you give your all for the IB program, stay to enjoy your victory lap, which is graduating with your IB diploma.
Another implication to “When you give your all, stay to enjoy your victory lap,” is during my tennis season. I have been playing tennis since my sophomore year and I have been playing ever since. I started on the last spot on JV sophomore year and I came up to Varsity Four Doubles by my senior year. On the tennis team there were dozens of players who were tremendously better than me, and I needed to get better to keep p with these better players. So each season, I stayed after practice to play more matches to get better. Each off season during the summer I practiced on my craft constantly to get better, and during the season I would perform so much better. Just like in IB there were many players who quit because it was too hard to get better but, during the off season and regular season I worked so hard to get better, and I stayed long enough to be awarded the varsity position my senior year. Being both an anticipated IB diploma graduate and Varsity Tennis player will be my victory lap when I remember back on to my high school career.