Learning to Grow by Working Hard by Maya

Learning to Grow by Working Hard by Maya - February 2021 Scholarship Essay

Success means different things to everyone. For some people, success means graduating at the top of their class. For others, success is simply making it through college with a degree. Some people will define success in college as the number of frat parties they went to and still others will measure success by their athletics and the number of tournaments they win. For me, success means doing my best under the circumstances and growing a little bit every day. Success means being proud of myself, confident in myself, and happy with what I achieve.
In general, I prefer to base my success on personal growth and learning. One part of success in college is understanding how I learn best, how I cope with stress, and learning to recognize when I put too much pressure on myself. Throughout my college experience, I want to grow as an individual and learn about myself. Already, I feel successful because I have started to understand how I cope with stress. When I get stressed out, I make To-Do lists and I start creating new calendars. During finals week in my first semester of college, I realized that I had about 4 different calendars and 3 To-Do lists with time slots for assignments down to the minute. I do this so that I can successfully manage my time to be successful with my exams and assignments. I’m proud of myself for learning how I work best early on so that I can build off of these discoveries and continue to grow as an individual.
Another way I measure my success is by doing my best and putting in 100% effort. I want to do my best in school and my best during my sport. I feel successful when I study hard for an exam and I get an A on the test. I felt successful when I found out that I got an A in all of my classes last semester. I worked hard and I put in the effort everyday. This helped academically perform at my best. I also feel successful when I perform at my best athletically. I’m a member of my university’s springboard diving team. When I dive, sometimes I have a bad day. But the important thing is that I stay dedicated and work to overcome my obstacles. Last week, I had a terrible practice. I was overthinking everything and I wasn’t performing very well. I was super nervous for our meet the next day, yet I showed up to the meet ready to work hard and dive well anyways. I felt so successful after the meet. Even though I didn’t win, I won in my heart because I did my best and I was proud of my diving.
Of course, one of the biggest measures of my success in college will be whether or not I can get into medical school and graduate. But I believe that by choosing to measure my own success through little personal achievements such as learning about myself and working hard to overcome obstacles, I will be successful in every way that is important to me.