Your Best is the Best You Can Do by lauren

Your Best is the Best You Can Do by lauren - July 2017 Scholarship Essay

Perfection. It's simply unachievable yet we strive for it every single day. No one is perfect, we are all human, and therefore we all make mistakes. Yet it's how we handle these mistakes that shape us into who and what we are, it's what becomes the context of our character and portrays to the world how we handle the most difficult of situations. I have been a competitive swimmer for ten years and swim with one of the fastest teams in the country. In theory I should be extremely fast. I should be the one that when I show up to swim meets the other swimmers become fearful of the competition that has just walked through the doorway. I should be the one that finishes each lap first feeling like I belong and feeling like I truly am made for swimming. In fact it is just the opposite. Every set and almost every race I'm last every single time. So one may ask "why still do it?" Why wake up at 4:30 in the morning just to get lapped by the fast kids or be the last one to touch the wall. My answer would be "because it's the best I can do" To have a hunger to achieve more and become a better swimmer is always in the back of my mind but to be upset with myself simply because I'm not "the best" is trying to achieve the unachievable. I make the best I can out of every practice I attend, by attempting to make others laugh and providing a never ending cheer from the other side of the pool deck. My goal within every practice is to help others do the best they can do.
In the beautiful town that I live in many believe that a 4.0 GPA is the key to a successful life, that without it college and other dreams may not even be achievable. Simply untrue. For me to get a 4.0 that would also require me to get an A in math, now I've tried for that A I’ve strived for that A but some things are just not in the cards for me, getting an A in math definitely being at the top of the list. I have stayed up countless hours before tests printing extra worksheets and going in almost every day to meet with my teacher which was only enough to get a C. Yet somehow I was satisfied, the year before I had earned a B so in theory I was getting worse and any hope for an A was diminishing. However that previous year that I got a B I learned almost nothing. The class was extremely easy and it failed to prepare me for the following math courses. Yet the year I earned a C I learned so many new concepts, techniques, even how to form my own study packets. And I was doing the best that I could do. Others got A's in the class and I chose not to be envious of them but to be happy for them because it was clear that they too were simply doing the best that they could do.
I would chose to talk about this topic in a TED talk because it is not talked about enough. In this day and age social media and the concept of perfection rules the world and many people use that to their advantage. People like to portray their lives, friends and activities online as being perfect, whether that's taking the perfect vacation, being with the right people, or editing pictures of ourselves to achieve that "perfect" look it can be hard to look from the outside in and see a perfect life even though that is rarely the case. We are so obsessed with being and looking perfect we forget to stop and enjoy our lives and live them with no regrets and no constant desire to be so perfect. So don't portray that you have the best life, portray the life you live and enjoy because if that isn't enough nothing is. Don't listen to the people who brag about their GPA and test scores from school because guaranteed they are going to look back on their high school experience and realize that those two scores were all they had. Focus on doing the best you can do and living a life you are truly proud of and making people laugh, cheering them on, and reminding them that their best is the best they can do because at the end of the day that's what people are going to remember.