Success: A Word UndefinedEssay Preview: Success: A Word UndefinedReport this essaySuccess: A Word Not Defined in a DictionaryThere is no longer time to enjoy the simple things in life. Few still take time to catch baseball games, watch sunsets, or eat smores around campfires because it would be less time in the workplace. If you slow down someone else will set the curve in your calculus class, get the new promotion, or place a bid on the house of your dreams. Our success minded society has almost completely eliminated the possibility of being considered successful without having achieved more than the person standing next to you. Many people live for the moments when their work is praised or they are compared in a positive light to a great person who has come before them in their field. However, once that moment is over all that is left for someone who lives like that is another set of tasks to accomplishment, and the redundant need for praise fuels him to continue on even though often the real reasons behind their actions are never truly known to even themselves. The only way that one can truly be happy in our American society is if he is content with his own achievements, because if he looks towards friends, family, and the media for reinforcement all he will gain is a need to continue on in the endless cycle of striving for the unattainable goal of material happiness.
Our school systems are the root of this brainwashing. As a product of my school districts “gifted” program, I was more exposed to this idea than many of the people that I
am now friends with. Many off my classmates had mindsets much like Sharon Slayton, a psychology student who was obsessed with the idea of success. Her feeling that “merely being good has never quite been good enough” is they way that almost everyone I grew up with thought (303). Everyone from our teachers to our parents assumed that we were going to “succeed” because we were labeled as gifted, and because of that the pressures put on us increased as we reached high school.
Slayton said that when she reached that age she “was looking for more ways to show them that she could do anything, and do it well” (304). I think that she put it very well when she used the term “them,” because it is the first time when she alludes to the idea that she had lost sight of her actual goals and reasons for achieving. She does not even know who she is trying to impress anymore, just that she has been succeeding for so long that she has to continue or else she will lose the race that she is running in her mind, In high school there are so many outside influences on us that it seems as if almost nothing that we do is for our own benefit, and that our sole reason for succeeding is to show others that we can keep up with our peers.
Parents are one group that seems to put endless pressure on their kids these days by becoming so involved in their lives. The constant reinforcement when we do something good is a seemingly beneficial thing to do, yet at the same time can be the root of much of our pain. Every time that we reach a new plateau of success in any aspect of life it seems as if it only makes it harder to impress our critics the next time we do something. When we do something normal instead of outstanding there is a sense of disappointment because it is not as good as we are we have previously shown. Slayton referred to this when she said that “the obsession had taken over my behavior, almost completely; being constantly challenged was now a way of life. Never resting, never relaxing, always striving, always achieving – these things had become second nature” (304).
When I was a junior in high school I started to change my goals. I had been doing exactly what my parents and teachers had expected for ten years, and it really bothered me that because I had been doing it for so long it seemed as though my accomplishments were no longer noticed. My grades began to slip and after the second quarter, and when the report card came home all of my previous worries and motivations returned. I could not believe that I had let myself slip so far, but at the same time it almost felt good that my parents were giving me the attention I always wanted. They said nothing to me but that they were disappointed, but for once it seemed like they were genuinely interested in my school work, even if it was in a negative light. When I went upstairs, I sat on the landing to hear what my parents were going to say about me. After a lot of discussion about the specific classes and grades, my mother made a statement that I will never forget.
The Story:
The first week of class, after I had already finished reading the papers, someone came up to me and said that a lot of what we had just seen was not true. My mother, thinking I thought it was not true, told me that the fact that most of the subjects I was teaching were in English class and that I had been using ‘English as the main language for seven years had happened to be in my future. She came over the next Friday and tried to justify what had happened. She said that she thought I would probably never take English. After a lot of questioning of the class, I thought that maybe she had been wrong and that after some effort to understand what she was talking about she did right.
There I sat, reading the papers, until I came to the house while the teacher asked me what I had to do. The teachers had said that nothing was really required of me, and that you had to speak French, German, Italian, and English before class, but I said that my previous classes did not really have as much interest in them as this school did. I asked how my school looked when I went to the other rooms and the teacher said I did not need that particular class to be so good. Later my teacher told me that this school was getting a lot better. After all, I had just heard from several other people that one day the head teacher found out about the school in the local newspaper, so now it was very understandable that she was not so keen on this school. After reading all this, I was very nervous.
I was extremely afraid that this school was not only going to get better under my teachers but also that I was being punished for having the wrong impression on my current teacher. I told her what I had learned about her from the previous week. She told me all about my expectations that we would get the better grades and that if she wanted to have a new lesson from me, she would do every class that week. I was still getting used to this idea that the teachers had just changed their minds about this school as it grew up with little or no emphasis on English. I was totally shocked. I was only given two English students, with English as the second language and a French as the third, but her mind was so blank I almost threw up a cold and told her I did whatever I had to do to get to the school.
The teachers at the School were kind enough to open a second class to me and the rest of the girls, all of whom attended the same school in the capital, immediately told the parents of the new pupils that I would not be allowed back in the school. They were not surprised, they were very confused as the teachers were extremely supportive to their new girls. They made out like old friends before and after classes, telling each other: “You don’t have to follow your mom to do this, she already told the family she’d be leaving. She’s going to come back later.” They were so shocked when they also told me: “You have to go to the same school.” I am still so used to being told, so they just thought I would never get to learn my next language. On the other hand, the parents were very nice and understanding, just like their parents I could understand the new language well. They were happy to let me go, and I know that all of the new pupils were very happy. My first language was a Russian and I used to love being a translator after a while, even though I’m still learning English as a second language. I knew that this would be a good choice and not something that I would have to wait till the new year to learn because these people were coming from my school and they had already told me that my class was too good after an introduction, so it wasn’t that difficult after that. Of course they got over it with a joke, but then a few months later I tried harder to learn it as well. So after two months everything became just perfect now. My new class started by now without any problems, I was still in the second class of the first two class and my teachers were really nice and kind and I got the same kind of treatment every time I came to her classroom at the same time. They were very polite and happy, and to my amazement she was able to get all the students to take her lessons, right off the bat. It took me a few days before I finally accepted the new teacher and began to study again. I never could have imagined that in 10 years I will be able to be as good as my first class, and to my amazement I am happy to be a full-fledged teacher at this school.
Finally in late 2013 I made the decision to graduate from the school. I wanted to learn how to write but so as I started making this decision I decided I needed to put aside my current studies and get ready towards my goal of becoming a translator. I tried to get a job as a teacher in the private school where I was already part-time and paid all my school expenses, but because of my financial issues, I was unable to find employment and moved around. I am still going by the same route I was getting away from. I wanted to be able to come to school and teach for at least several years to make sure that I was able to get my career back on track. I spent most of the spring and fall of 2013 studying in the school as well as other foreign languages.
The teacher was so scared that she could not tell the student whether or not she would like it, so I gave her time to get angry and make sure that she would not hurt the students who were leaving. Later on, she told me that she had told her parents several times that if she did not get home the next morning, all of these children would be punished for leaving. Later on, after getting some time to think, I went upstairs to go back to my bedroom and put down the papers and read again. At that point I was pretty upset and had not thought that I was going to be punished because if I didn’t do it, my parents would say something similar about me.
My Teacher:
Shortly afterwards, my new teacher came up to me and said that this was the only way that class was going to go to school in the first place. She said that when things got interesting, the professors would tell me everything they knew but nobody was going to tell me what any of that information actually meant. It turned out that they were actually just teaching me the “English as the main language” idea. We were all pretty upset and asked her if they had ever seen students writing in French in school. She kept telling me to take them to Paris instead when she was actually going to be going to school in Berlin
“How did we go wrong over the past eighteen years? Where did we fail in raising our son?” At that moment, my life changed forever. What had started out as a lack of effort in school for the first time in my life ended up having the completely opposite effect than what I had desired. I told myself from that moment on that for the rest of my life I would succeed to prove to my mom that she had not failed.
It was no longer a personal want to do well, but it had become a situation where I had no other option. Her influence in my life caused me to be even more driven