Re-write and fix mistakes
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OlgaEgorovaessay2.docx6
Olga Egorova
Prof. Amarnick
ENG 24
04/13/ 2019
Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
I am a looser. If I will fail on one exam it will ruin my entire life. I have to do everything perfectly, otherwise no one will like me. My relatives will be disappointed. I will not even try because if I fail, I will be ashamed in front other people… This is how many people believe. But we are know that if failure not going to break you down they may teach you to be stronger (to go further and try one more time), may change your life (to find yourself in other field) and teach you of acceptance (step back and look at yourself without pink glasses).
Does not matter how many times you failed, more important how many times you could raise up. Very often it is impossible to say exactly why you won, because sometimes it can be your winning or weakness of your opponent. Failure is not always is a tragedy, because failure may teach us to win. Anyway failures lead us to benefits. We just should to think why did we fail? Maybe because of a lack of experience or particular knowledge for achievements. But in order to win you have to constantly try to do so. If you just start to run you will not become an Olympic champion next week. No one can be a master with finishing only high school. You need an experience in order to achieve something, which you can get only through loosing. You just have to analyze what you have to fix to be successful next time. Also loosing make your spirit stronger.
Losses teach you revision of your plans and actions. If you failed that means your plan did not worked and you have to make up a new one, a better one. It teaches you of sense of priorities and consideration of your strategy. Many people can find themselves in different areas. Failures may lead you to decision that you have to target another field. It does not make any sense to try to be a bad hairstylist if you can be a good baker. You just have to do that you can do better that others. Also, fiasco may not to teach you anything at all, it depends from your personality, stubbornness and purposeful. For someone one failure is enough to stop, but for another person even thousands of them are insufficient.
When you fail you still remain yourself. In another way it will teach you humility that you would not get what you want. Possibly, it will teach you how to find your weakest sides and work on them. It relaxes you and accommodates your ambitions, especially, if you really wanted to win. Failures does not mean that you are looser. Factor of coincidence exists all the way during your lifespan. Sometimes many things depends on your luck more than your potential. Likely, you failed because others did not even played fair and it is very unpleasant opening. Sometimes losses just shows us how weak we really are and that we are far away from perfection. It may encourage you to next step of your development or push you to analyze yourself.
Bruce Springsteen is an American singer-songwriter and leader of the “E Street Band” and author of autobiography book Born to Run. In the book he wrote about his long was to success and all failures and obstacles he met on the way. He said,
“Whatever its results, the California trip would have a lasting impact on me. I got to see the country. I came up against some real talent and held my own, but the band that took us out at the Family Dog stayed with me. They were better than us and that didn’t sit well with me. It’s not that I didn’t expect to come up against superior talent; that happens, it’s the way God planned it.” (Springsteen 137)
He worked really hard to get what he wanted. Somewhere, deep inside Springsteen knew that one day he will become a great musician. He felt his power. The power was in his talent and constant practice of his skills. The author was so sure that he does everything right. In the beginning, his talent did not give him much money. He struggled financially. By playing music he earned $20-30 per week. Anyway, Springsteen and his band did not stop to play music, because of luck of money. The author did not even have space to live sometimes, but he worked on himself, in order to be the best. He wanted to be extra ordinary. Once he has got a brilliant idea: he needs to write his own songs with his music and words for being different from others musicians. He wrote “I’d been up for three days with no stimulants” (Springsteen 191). He was contagious and persistent with his goal. Bruce Springsteen and his band went through all difficulties to become a huge figures in a rock music: they had problems with stuff, police, drugs, rehearsals time, producers and etc. Seems it was long way to success. After all, he appreciated those obstacles and difficulties he met and he was proud of himself and shared his inspiring story to millions of readers. The most important thing he said “I was so lucky to be doing what I loved most” (Springsteen 193), this is a clue that gives him energy and desire to never give up.
In article “On Campus, Failure Is on the Syllabus” by Jessica Bennett the author tell us about problem that spreads among modern teenagers. Students are so stressed out and afraid not to be perfect, that they could not believe that someone may declare it shout-out. “…Students who wandered into the campus hub were faced with an unfamiliar situation: the worst failures of their peers projected onto a large screen. “I failed my first college writing exam,” one student revealed” wrote Bennett. In traditional sense college has to encourage you to be an “A” student literally from the first steps, but if they welcomed people with such a greeting there should be a problem. Now people believe that without education you not going to succeed in life. Parents convince their kids to be a lawyers or a doctors. Everyone wants to get diploma for earning money, but not for their personal development and sense that they will spend entire life for career they truly enjoy. I believe that everyone who really want to pursue their dream eventually will get it even though not from the first try.
Failure not always relate to material things. Very good point mentioned Paul Hudson in his article “6 Failures You Should Experience If You Want to Succeed in Life”. He was talking about interpersonal relationship with lovers, friends and even random people in our lives. “Once you experience a falling-out with a friend, you understand yourself a little bit better and the life you hope to lead. It’s most often the company we keep that determines the life we live.” We always have to be careful with people who surround us. Human relationship could be fragile. People may support us when we going to fail in the above mentioned events.
In my life failures often meant much more than winnings, they always brings some changes. I never wanted to be a perfect in some particular field. My parents never required excellent grade from me in school. They also supported me with good words if I did not pass some exam. They told me, “You will pass next time”. There were always another try and if not it was not a big deal. But if I have some important occasion from my future life may change I try to make up plan B.
I am a winners. Eventually, the failure on one exam will never ruin my life. We always may get up, buck up and start to fight for the dream all over again. So many inspiring examples around us, you just have to look over. Steve Jobs never graduated from college. Walt Disney got fired with explanation of “lacked imagination and had no good ideas” (Kipman). Albert Einstein was speechless until age of four, he could not read until age seven and was diagnosed with mental illness. Former president Abraham Lincoln tried to start new businesses, to be a politician but failed several times. Michael Jordan was removed from his school team. And many, many other examples that should give us the idea that failure is just a starting point.
Work Cited
Bennett, Jessica. “On Campus, Failure Is on the Syllabus”. The New York Times. 24 June 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/fashion/fear-of-failure.html. Accessed 13 April 2019
Hudson, Paul. “6 Failures You Should Experience If You Want To Succeed In Life”. Elite Daily. 2 February 2015, https://www.elitedaily.com/life/motivation/failures-to-make-want-succeed-in-life/922082. Accessed 13 April 2019
Kipman, Sebastian. “15 Highly Successful People Who Failed on Their Way to Success”. Lifehack. September 20, 2018. https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/15-highly-successful-people-who-failed-their-way-success.html. Accessed 13 April 2019
Springsteen, Bruce. Born to Run. Simon&Schuster Paperbacks, 2017
Olga—
This is a compelling first version. You get the essay off to a terrific start with your opening paragraph about being a loser, and I especially like the closing paragraph as well, as you give quick examples about famous people who had significant failures in their lives. While the beginning and ending are strong, it is the middle section that would benefit from a lot more work. Here are five things to think about as you work on the revision:
1) Your discussion of Springsteen starts too abruptly, and sounds too much like a Wikipedia entry, with your mention of him being “an American singer-songwriter and leader of the E Street Band.” Can you make it clearer why you have decided to talk about him in such depth? Yes, I understand that you are required to do so for the assignment. But it shouldn’t seem that way in the essay; instead, the reader should feel as if it’s entirely logical and meaningful that you explore what Springsteen has to say.
2) I’d like to see you include a number of paragraphs about Springsteen, not just one long one. Refer to what we did in class about “middle” paragraphs: transition/topic sentence, context, quotation, commentary/analysis.
3) The two articles that you cite in addition to Bennett’s are not, as far as I can tell, those that you discovered by clicking the links in her article. They are from self-help websites, which can be fine but are not really serious texts. You can use them, but only in addition to the more substantive sources that she refers to.
4) The assignment sheet asked you to include a specific discussion of the certificate of failure from Smith College. Where is it?
5) On pages four and five in particular, you forget to use the quotation style that we’ve been practicing all semester: lead into the quotation with your own words in the same sentence, then include parenthetical citations afterward. For a review of this, go to the “quotation style” handout on the Course Content tab.
