Using a favorite quotation from an essay or book you have read in the last three years as a starting point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world. Please write the quotation at the beginning of your essay.
"Life is never fair, Robert. And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not." --Lord Goring, An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
It wasn't fair! It was November 5th, the Thursday before the 2009 State cross country meet, and my coach had just announced that I wasn't on the varsity lineup.. For the past year, I had run through snow, heat, rain, wind and injury with one goal: running at the State meet. I couldn't believe that all of my hard work had gone to waste. Even though I had run varsity all season and had helped the team qualify for State, my coach was giving the spot to (someone who I thought was) a less deserving runner. I wanted to slam my head against the wall in frustration and even entertained thoughts of giving up running. It seemed like not running State was the end of my world, and for a while I held a strong grudge against my coach and teammates.
However, I soon realized that I couldn't sulk forever, and sooner or later I would have to drop my grudges and decide whether I wanted to continue running. Even though I felt my coach and team had greatly wronged me, I put the situation into perspective and told myself that people have much worse problems that not running at the State meet. I looked at my year of hard training in a new light and saw that instead of it going to waste, it gave me a large fitness base to build on. I had already put so much effort into running that there was no way I was just going to give up. Instead, I was going to get so much faster that there wouldn't even be a question of whether I was good enough to run varsity.
With this new take on the situation, I started training with renewed determination and with the memory of that disappointing day in early November fresh in my mind. Once again, I went out running every day, rain or shine, with renewed purpose. I rebuilt relationships with my coaches and teammates and once again made it to the State meet my senior year. This time, as my coach announced the lineup, there was no question who would be running. Two years of training finally paid off as I secured my spot as the fourth runner and a varsity team captain.
As the proverbial saying goes, life isn't fair. Having to deal with this unfairness is a given, and experiencing it firsthand in an activity that I devoted so much time to has given me a new way to look at life. I now understand that unfairness, like other obstacles, are unavoidable bumps in the roadway of life, and to succeed, you just have to push through them. Although it might be impossible to smooth out these bumps, they make life challenging and interesting. I will never understand why my coach took me off the 2009 State lineup, but now instead of sulking every time I feel like I have been wronged, I use the experience as motivation to work harder towards my goals.
"Life is never fair, Robert. And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not." --Lord Goring, An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
It wasn't fair! It was November 5th, the Thursday before the 2009 State cross country meet, and my coach had just announced that I wasn't on the varsity lineup.. For the past year, I had run through snow, heat, rain, wind and injury with one goal: running at the State meet. I couldn't believe that all of my hard work had gone to waste. Even though I had run varsity all season and had helped the team qualify for State, my coach was giving the spot to (someone who I thought was) a less deserving runner. I wanted to slam my head against the wall in frustration and even entertained thoughts of giving up running. It seemed like not running State was the end of my world, and for a while I held a strong grudge against my coach and teammates.
However, I soon realized that I couldn't sulk forever, and sooner or later I would have to drop my grudges and decide whether I wanted to continue running. Even though I felt my coach and team had greatly wronged me, I put the situation into perspective and told myself that people have much worse problems that not running at the State meet. I looked at my year of hard training in a new light and saw that instead of it going to waste, it gave me a large fitness base to build on. I had already put so much effort into running that there was no way I was just going to give up. Instead, I was going to get so much faster that there wouldn't even be a question of whether I was good enough to run varsity.
With this new take on the situation, I started training with renewed determination and with the memory of that disappointing day in early November fresh in my mind. Once again, I went out running every day, rain or shine, with renewed purpose. I rebuilt relationships with my coaches and teammates and once again made it to the State meet my senior year. This time, as my coach announced the lineup, there was no question who would be running. Two years of training finally paid off as I secured my spot as the fourth runner and a varsity team captain.
As the proverbial saying goes, life isn't fair. Having to deal with this unfairness is a given, and experiencing it firsthand in an activity that I devoted so much time to has given me a new way to look at life. I now understand that unfairness, like other obstacles, are unavoidable bumps in the roadway of life, and to succeed, you just have to push through them. Although it might be impossible to smooth out these bumps, they make life challenging and interesting. I will never understand why my coach took me off the 2009 State lineup, but now instead of sulking every time I feel like I have been wronged, I use the experience as motivation to work harder towards my goals.
