CMST small assginments

Young Choi

English 101

Mr. Hemmen

November 12, 2021

Argumentative Essay

Hard work over talent

Do most of you know or are you aware of your own talents? Can you pinpoint what your talent is and what you can specialize in? Does your talent have anything to do with what you want for the future? Are you born with special attributes or certain strengths that make you better than others? No. I don’t believe so. Raw talent is forged the way I see it. Forged with Hard work.

Talent is a quality you may be born with. You can’t show up to a barista job and think you’d excel because maybe you think your talent is being highly social. Say that your talent is high social skills. Having that sort of talent may help you or give you an extra push to get better, but none of that grows or strengthens without working hard to hone your spear. Some talents can be as simple as being double jointed or maybe making a clover with your tongue. Talent can almost mean nothing in some cases. Talent can be a trait you created for yourself which you can feel confident in and to some it would seem incredible. None of these can be reached without hard work.

Hard work to me is more important than talent. Talent can only get you so far if you’re not willing to put in the work for it. David McCullough’s “You are not special” speech is an example that I will be using. From our past seminar in class we went over McCullough’s speech. He states that, you are not special, you are not exceptional and so on. Through the speech, McCullough blast the graduates on how they aren’t special and how they all are there in the same uniform because they achieved the same thing. At the end he uplifts the graduates with saying, everyone is special and that everyone shares the same equal opportunity. How is that. Not by talent I’m damn sure. Graduating school for example isn’t talent. Some student may be able to process somethings better and faster and that could be a talent. That doesn’t mean anything. There are those who also believe they are terrible at school but graduate. How? The answer is hard work. Let’s say that you don’t understand something or a certain subject in school. You don’t just sit there and let “talent” take the wheel, but instead you work harder and study to understand what you don’t.

Hard work is more important in every view that I can possibly think of. Maybe talent can give you an extra step or lead in a race but it’s not what wins you the race. Talent can’t relieve the burn in your legs but hard work can push you through the pain. Hard work can be a key way to create a talent, but without hard work you get nowhere. To put it simple and blunt, talent is almost nothing without hard work. To be honest, the more I write and think about whether talent is more important or hard work is important. It seems they go hand in hand. Ultimately, I believe that its hard work that can make your talent shine, and that without hard work talent is almost useless.

There are those with talent that may think they are the best because of it. They lose the willingness of working hard to let those talents shine. Those can think that it’s easy and simple to do what they want because they have a “talent” at it. Results to being overconfident and honestly becoming lazy because those think they can rely on their talent. NBA star Kevin Durant once said, “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” Which I think is an amazing statement. Without hard work, talent can be as simple as being able to jump a little higher. That alone won’t take you to the NBA. Do you believe that NBA players are drawn out with mere talent? Not even a chance. These athletes may have been born taller or maybe a little more athletic than others, but it’s not what got them into the NBA. For example, the Black Mamba. Mr. Kobe Bryant himself. Most NBA fans think he’s amazing and talented and that he was born to do what he does. No, it’s not really as simple. He focused on the process. Talent didn’t wake him up at four AM in the morning to train and practice. Hard work did. The amount of effort and hard work he put in to become the Black Mamba is indescribable. It wasn’t talent that set of in a steady river but his hard work to swim up the river.

To conclude my argument. Hard work is more important than talent. I feel that talent wouldn’t exist without hard work. Hard work is what’s going to get you through life. Hard work is what makes you able. Hard work is how you answer to overcome any difficulties that you could not. Hard work is what makes you take that extra step to the finish line. Hard work with a sprinkle of dedication is what gets you up in the morning to go to work. There is a limit to where talent can take you, and I believe that hard work can take you place far greater and better. At the end, it’s on how hard you work that decides where you will be, not talent.