The Search for Success by Kevin

The Search for Success by Kevin - December 2019 Scholarship Essay

The shrill piercing sound of the school bell rang through the air, calling out for the end of another school day. I gazed up at the wall towards the poster, its corner drooping as if waving to garner my attention. I read the tiny font, “Rube Goldberg meeting in 273”, reassured myself with a brief “You only have two years left,” and set off on a journey to create a needlessly complex machine to perform a simple task — to pour a bowl of cereal.

Despite my uncertainty apropos the club, a wave of familiar faces were there to greet me. We decided to build a pirate-themed machine and immediately set off to work constructing two model pirate ships to develop our apparatus around. Around mid-December, we finally decided to test our contraption contrived from an unusual variety of household parts worked. I sat hunched over the machine, meticulously ensuring the position of each piece, hoping it would flow together seamlessly. We triggered the first step, which consisted of turning an old wooden wheel, and watched our work unfold.

The next moment a sail unfolded, a pirate swung from ship to ship, a parrot flew over an ocean hitting over a tetherball, and then — nothing! We reset and tried again. And again. And again. I glanced up from my now monotonous resetting of the machine to see what the problem was. Our particular issue lay with a series of mousetraps that were engineered to yank a nail that would, in turn, launch a cannonball across a makeshift ocean. I volunteered to fix the issue, and eagerly returned to the drawing board. Except, our dilemma wasn’t an easy one to solve. The subsequent days became a cycle of new ideas followed by imminent disappointment. The pressure of impending competition, and my reluctance to fail and let my teammates down, actually brought out the best in me. I tried fabricating the mousetraps to be more powerful — to yank the nail out with brute force — but failed. I attempted to lubricate the nail to lower the coefficient of friction allowing it to be extracted easier — but failed. No matter how many possible solutions I could think of, it seemed as if I was fated to fail. It was only several iterations later that I discovered a solution: to drill a new hole for the nail at the perfect angle to maximize force, making it easier to pull.

The countless hours our team spent on the machine eventually ended up paying off with us ending up with an excellent 4th place run at the national showcase. We are barred from success by the obstructions that litter our path, but that doesn't mean it’s unattainable. Society often pushes an image of instant gratification, but that's hardly the case. Real success is demanding and takes you through a journey of obstacles that are gut-wrenching and make you second guess yourself. It is by persevering through these circumstances that we get closer to success.

As John Quincy Adams once said, “patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear, and obstacles vanish.” Thus, as the path ahead of us becomes more difficult, the rewards we reap become all the more bountiful, and it is vital that we refuse to relinquish our goals on the journey towards success. My desire to excel and persevere didn’t stop at Rube; it infiltrated into other aspects of my life. I strove to be the best version of myself in both my academic and social life and resolved that I would overcome any hurdles on the path to success.