Hope For a Better Future by Samuel

Hope For a Better Future by Samuel - December 2017 Scholarship Essay

I’ve always heard that time management is going to be my best friend throughout my life. The problem with that is that I don’t really have time management skills. So, when I hear about a school project I do as I’m told and plan out certain days when I need to have certain things done, and then go back to working on what’s important right then. Douglas Adams once said “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” This is especially true in my case. I am one of those infamous master procrastinators you hear about on the news. I don’t complete my work unless I’m motivated by an outside force. And so in order to overcome this, I make sure there are lots of outside forces working on myself, and I ensure that there are some outside forces that stay away while I’m working.
There is always more homework to finish, and always more due. One of the outside forces I use is shame. I feel ashamed if I turn in an assignment late or don’t turn it in at all. This helps me push forward and with fervor when the last few minutes and seconds before a deadline, writing at inhumane speeds and with lightning fast keypresses. Alongside shame is the fear of failure and letting others down. I fear failure because then the high expectations placed upon me will be falsely placed. This helps me keep on working even when I don’t want to, and even when I can barely think from lack of sleep.
From these two… well no good comes from these in the end. I miss deadlines and I’ve failed tests and I lost the faith that others have placed in me. Whenever I mess up with these two as my motivation I fall into a deep, dark pit that I can’t seem to get out of. What I really use is more of a carrot on the end of a stick.
I motivate myself with determination, competition, a positive mindset, and the hope for a better future. My brother told me when I was younger that “you can’t wait to be in the right mood to work, you have to work in whatever mood you’re in.” You have to sit yourself down in a chair, on a couch, or wherever you can find and get to work. The hardest step to working is to start, and from there it’s a cakewalk. The best way to sit yourself down is to be determined to finish it. Having a competitive nature does help, though.
A very powerful motivator is comparing myself to my peers. If they’re doing better than me, I want to work harder. If they got a 3 on 2 AP tests, then I’m gonna get a 3 on 2 AP tests and a 5 on another. If they’re filling a scholarship a week, then I’m gonna fill out two scholarships a week. If my peers are spending hours on their school projects, then I’m gonna spend days with a lot of effort on my school projects so that when they’re project is awesome, mine will be awesome and with lasers.
My second most powerful motivator is to have a positive mindset. As Dr. Seuss once noted, “everything stinks till it’s finished.” This isn’t all true, though. What you do doesn’t have to stink. If you look at it in the right way, it could be entertaining, informative, and helpful for the rest of your life. Knowing the composition of one of Jupiter’s moons and the size ratio between the planet and the moon won’t necessarily help you in earning your Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration, but it couldn’t hurt to know it. Besides, knowing that puts you ahead of your peers.
My ultimate strategy for success on a school project is much more powerful than all that discussed so far. I want to see a better future. A better future for myself, a better future for my children, a better future for my friends, and a better future for my friends I haven’t met yet and will never meet. The first step to creating this better future is to start. How do you eat an elephant? One step at a time. A school project on reconstructing the integumentary system almost seems ridiculously unrelated to the betterment of mankind, but one does not simply help the entirety of the human race without any skills. Whether or not I agree that what I’m learning is applicable to my future life, I will still do it because there’s a slim chance it might help someone else down the road. I want to help everyone as best as I can, and the best way to do that is to know as much as possible to know how I can help them as best as possible. And to know as much as possible, like how you eat an elephant, I have to complete each piece of homework assigned, and complete to the best of my ability each school project assigned.