My Definition of Ambition
As a child growing up on the South-Side of chicago, I never really understood how people had the energy to stay in school and graduate or go to work each day. I honestly didn’t really think there was much after 8th grade, except for dead ends of life. In reality, I believed that there was no way for someone to achieve anything unless they we’re born into an environment where they were provided with the materials needed to get there. I also believed that the way you were born, whether you were born rich or poor, that’s the way you will live for the rest of your life. How many 12 year olds really think this way? How sad is it that a 12 year old had no inspiration to want to become something better than their circumstances? …show more content…
It wasn’t something I was born with, it was something that had to be taught to me by people who really understood what it meant to come from nothing and succeed later on in life. Later on in my freshman year I had been exposed to different opportunities and different people. I was exposed to a world where I believed it was impossible to reach but visible to see. The encounter that led me to change my pessimistic mindset was the day I saw two of my very own friends grow up in the same territory but yet end up in two different planets. Rebekah and Kahlil grew up in the same middle class home, with two parents and 4 children. Rebekah was the oldest of the children and Kahlil was the second oldest, they were only a year apart. Even though they came from the same surroundings Rebekah had the upper hand on Kahlil because she had ambition and motivation, something he didn’t have. The result of his lack of self confidence and ambition to achieve, he got into a lot of trouble in school and eventually dropped out before his sophomore year in high school, however, his older sister went on to graduate from high school and go to college on a full ride scholarship. The world that Kahlil couldn’t see himself in, was the same world that his sister was living in, right in front of his face. At that moment I realized how important ambition was to the human mind and how it could change a person’s
As a child growing up on the South-Side of chicago, I never really understood how people had the energy to stay in school and graduate or go to work each day. I honestly didn’t really think there was much after 8th grade, except for dead ends of life. In reality, I believed that there was no way for someone to achieve anything unless they we’re born into an environment where they were provided with the materials needed to get there. I also believed that the way you were born, whether you were born rich or poor, that’s the way you will live for the rest of your life. How many 12 year olds really think this way? How sad is it that a 12 year old had no inspiration to want to become something better than their circumstances? …show more content…
It wasn’t something I was born with, it was something that had to be taught to me by people who really understood what it meant to come from nothing and succeed later on in life. Later on in my freshman year I had been exposed to different opportunities and different people. I was exposed to a world where I believed it was impossible to reach but visible to see. The encounter that led me to change my pessimistic mindset was the day I saw two of my very own friends grow up in the same territory but yet end up in two different planets. Rebekah and Kahlil grew up in the same middle class home, with two parents and 4 children. Rebekah was the oldest of the children and Kahlil was the second oldest, they were only a year apart. Even though they came from the same surroundings Rebekah had the upper hand on Kahlil because she had ambition and motivation, something he didn’t have. The result of his lack of self confidence and ambition to achieve, he got into a lot of trouble in school and eventually dropped out before his sophomore year in high school, however, his older sister went on to graduate from high school and go to college on a full ride scholarship. The world that Kahlil couldn’t see himself in, was the same world that his sister was living in, right in front of his face. At that moment I realized how important ambition was to the human mind and how it could change a person’s