Reaching Excellence

What is reaching excellence? How do you reach your goals? When you reach for something you strive for it. You will do whatever it takes to reach your goal. You strive to your best at what you do. The denotation of excellence: An excelling, superiority, a particular virtue. What I think that means is you will reach for superiority in a specific talent or a class at school. You can also reach excellence in life and in everything you do.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you will succeed. It means you will try. Success isn’t always achieving your goal. It is how you try to achieve your goal or excellence that you will reach excellence. The path trying to get what you want is how you’ll remember how you did. That is also how people will remember you. I tried out for the school play and I got casted as a townsperson. At first I was really disappointed and then I realized that I’m still in the play, so why not make the best of it.

Then at our last practice we had a character still not casted yet. This character was a man named Joe, he has four lines, but I reached my goal. I am in the play with two parts: one, I get to be in the play as a townsperson and two; I get to have a speaking role. I reached excellence in trying as hard as I possibly could to reach excellence and to reach my goal.

I interviewed Alex. She is in seventh grade on team 7-1. She says, ”My goals are to keep working hard and trying to do my best and succeed in what I do”. I asked her what she thought reaching excellence was and if she has reached excellence and succeeded in reaching her goals. She replies, “I think reaching excellence is by working hard, trying hard, and doing your best. Yes, I study for all important tests [and quizzes] and hand in all work on time”.

I agree with Alex to a certain point. I think it’s not always just trying to reach excellence, sometimes it is that you succeeded, but it depends on your goal and how hard you’re willing to work to get there. I like how Alex expresses her opinion and ideas on her goals. She is a very hard working girl who has done well achieving excellence, by what I know about Alex.

“To raise my children to be loving and caring and to be Christians. One of my goals are to help them be educated enough to support themselves and live on their own”, was Kara Lee Brookie’s answer when asked what her goals were. Kara Lee has raised 7 children and has her youngest daughter in sixth grade. She is 47 years old and is an active member of our PTA. “Reaching excellence is different for each person based on the uniqueness and human capability of each individual”, was her answer to ‘What do you think reaching excellence is?’. Has Mrs. Kara Lee reached her goals? She says, “No matter how old you are you can always learn something new. I learn something new every week”.

When she first said that, I had no idea what that had to do with reaching excellence and reaching goals, but then I realized that you can learn something every week, but that doesn’t mean you will. It doesn’t mean you’re going to, it means if you put your mind towards something to learn about it, you never stop learning about that subject. Mrs. Brookie learns something new every week about taking care of her family, job, the stress of paying bills and cooking and cleaning, and everyday life. You never stop learning in life. To a certain extent and from knowing the Brookie family I think she has reached her goals, but you can always be an overachiever.

Nick is 13 years old and loves sports like most boys and men. Nick wants to be part of the swim team this coming summer and he wants to join a soccer team with Cesa. Nick also wants to raise his grades and move up to advanced classes in school. He tells me these are his current goals. When asked what he thought excellence was he frowned and asked me what it was as if he didn’t understand where I was coming from. I explained to him that he had to answer that question with his own opinion.

This was his answer, “I think reaching excellence is when you work so hard [to achieve something] and you are doing what you want to do”. When asked if he has accomplished his manly goals he says, “I pulled up my grades and am getting moved up to advanced classes”. As for the summer sport goals I think he will do a great job reaching excellence in them as well.

When I got the yearbook application and read through it and saw that the topic was ‘Reaching Excellence’ at first I was really confused because I had no idea what that was or what that meant. And then I referred to a dictionary and looked up reach and excellence and I paired it up with goals because I thought if you reach for excellence you are striving to reach your goals. I learned a lot about people I knew, how they voiced their opinion, and what they wanted to achieve. I learned how they live their life and how hard they work to do what they need and love to do. I think reaching excellence or reaching goals is when you strive to do your best at what you do.

Reaching excellence isn’t just doing one thing and being done with it. You never stop striving to do it better just like you never stop learning. Excellence is a particular virtue just like education. I think excellence is something no one can take away from you just like your education. Keep striving to do better in whatever you do. Never stop, never quit. Always try to reach excellence. If you don’t succeed on your first try, keep going and keep learning.