Be Humble. Be Hungry. And Always be the Hardest Worker in the Room. by nathan

Be Humble. Be Hungry. And Always be the Hardest Worker in the Room. by nathan - December 2019 Scholarship Essay

I played striker for the school soccer team for four years. I love playing soccer and sports in general. Being on the soccer team has taught me how to work as a part of a team toward a common goal. I also learned through hard work, I can achieve my goals.
In the past, all I wanted to do was score so that I could receive praise. I tried to dribble past everyone and ended up losing the ball, which accomplished nothing. I quickly realized that if I scored, but we still lost, it would be meaningless. So instead of trying to score, I learned to focus on working with my teammates. We all have different strengths and should work as one unit for the good of the team. Playing on the soccer team has helped me work and communicate more effectively with others.

Of course, I wanted to excel on the soccer team, so I decided to work on my athleticism. I made it a priority to gain ten pounds through weightlifting as quickly as possible. I was discontented with the body I had which allowed me to focus on achieving my goal. I didn’t want to be seen as the skinny kid. As I grew on the outside and others began to notice, my confidence grew as well. Eventually, I gained more than fifteen pounds and grew in strength. Once I found the motivation for reaching my goal, giving the time and effort to achieve that goal was easy. This is because setting a goal would have been pointless for me without a reason for that goal. I have learned to shift my focus from the “what” to the “why,” because there would have been no way I could have succeeded if I had no drive.
As I continued to pursue weight training, I decided to try deadlifting. I have always excelled at learning new things quickly. With the aid of Youtube, where one can find tutorial videos on practically anything, I have taught myself several skills such as how to yo-yo, mastering the art of origami, and playing the piano. I can also juggle five balls and solve a Rubix cube in twenty seconds. While I mastered these hobbies swiftly, I learned that not everything is suitable for this type of rapid learning technique, for example, heavy weight lifting, particularly the deadlift.
A Youtube video had made the exercise appear to be easy, and lifting the lighter weight was effortless, so I threw seventy more pounds onto the bar. I struggled to move the heavier weight, but otherwise everything seemed fine. Suddenly, I felt a shooting pain as my back went rrrriiiiiipppp. I felt like my back was being torn in half, and I nearly dropped the bar. I made my way upstairs and lay down on the floor alone in agony. All I could think about was how this would impact my ability to continue playing on the soccer team that year. After a few days had passed and it was still painful to walk and sit, I realized that my soccer playing was over for the season. All I could think about was how foolish I had been.
A year has passed since my injury, and I’m able to play soccer again. However, the injury has cautioned me never to do things just to boost my ego. What started as an honest attempt to become more athletic turned into misfortune when vanity got the best of me, all because I wanted to be able to brag about how much I could lift. From this, I learned a valuable lesson on how pride leads to destruction. Reflecting on this experience, I realized that a better method for learning to deadlift would have been to learn it from someone with expertise in weight lifting. In the future, as I seek to acquire new talents, I will be careful to evaluate my motives and be sure that my method of learning is appropriate for the skill to be learned.

As I move on, I will set new goals and work on them with effort, consistency, and, most importantly, safety. I can ensure that I can reach my goals by putting my focus on the “why” for that goal, rather than the “what.” For the most part, I have recovered from the injury, but I have not yet fully regained my strength. From time to time, when I participate in any extremely energetic activity such as sprinting, I feel a lingering pain in my lower back, acting as a reminder to always stay safe and never try to show off.