Last Essay!

            At age eight, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I loved to draw and drew on practically everything I was allowed to draw on. I knew I was good at it because people around me would praise me for my little doodles and art projects. In the fourth grade, I even won a drawing contest for the Union City Fire Department. They displayed my drawing and won a sweet prize: a pizza dinner for my family at Bronco Billy’s! I knew what I wanted to be and I wanted to be successful. While growing up, we believe that being successful is by finishing something like graduating from college or being rich and having the fanciest car and clothes. We also define success by all the achievements we’ve made and all the materialistic things we consume. Sometimes success is defined by the community and that becomes the standard. Success becomes limited, one-sided, and sometimes becomes impossible to reach. The pressure is real and isn’t going to go anywhere. However, success should be defined by how an individual sees and loves their life.


            The happiness level of a person can determine how successful they are. I can’t imagine someone being successful without being happy or satisfied with life. It just seems contradictory for someone to not be happy and successful simultaneously. From the book, “Into the Wild,” by Jon Kraukauer, the main character, Chris McCandless, graduated college from Emory University and his parents were very proud of him. Although Chris’ parents were happy for his achievement, Chris’ thoughts and feelings didn’t mirror theirs. Having a college degree didn’t matter to him as much as it did to his parents. McCandless felt like he was being held back from the authority of his parents from pursuing his true dream. Because I mentioned that success is defined by the individual, success is what a person naturally wants and most individuals strive to be happy. People crave for happiness, but that isn’t achieved until they are successful in something. It can be as simple as beating a level in candy crush, getting an A in an exam, or winning the lotto.
 

             Reaching that success level isn't an easy one. It's going to have mostly downs during the journey, but that's what makes it so much more worth it - the struggle. The struggle may be the worst part, but that's what going to make it feel more victorious.  Victory is what we will be thankful for and will inspire us to continue to move forward.  I think that being successful requires a lot of motivation, determination, and support.  The obstacles and challenges will try to overcome us but we must overcome them! A person can only have so much will power mentally and physically, but a person can be emotionally stable with another person's support which we should be thankful for. A person's relationships can go a long way when being successful. With the help of others, a person can take five leaps rather than a couple steps. For example, on Chris’ road to Alaska, he encountered many people that were willing to help him. Chris was just a hitchhiker who pretty much didn’t have anything except his strong will power. Relationships with others can only further and speed up someone's journey to success.
            Not only will there be struggles when aiming to be successful, there will definitely be failures along the journey. Failing is normal and everyone goes through it. It’s a part of life. One day McCandless was hunting for meat and spotted a moose. He shot it, killed it, took it apart, and tried to preserve it. The problem was, he only learned to preserve the meat outdoors at South Dakota, so using that technique failed him at Alaska. Maggots surrounded the moose preserves. On that day, McCandless wrote in his journal, “I now wish I had never shot the moose. One of the greatest tragedies of my life,” (167).  Failing is not necessarily a negative state, but it all depends on how you react to failure. The best way to respond to failure is by accepting the failure, examine what when wrong, and learn from. Being positive during negative times, can make a difference. The next day McCandless noted, “henceforth will learn to accept my errors, however great they be,” (167). I’m sure McCandless was very upset about all the meat  that could have lasted him for a few weeks. It probably felt like a tease to McCandless when he knew he caught the moose. It must have been one of the best days of his life, until the maggots appeared. It was a struggle for McCandless to take the moose apart because it lasted him a whole day to take care of. The struggle of taking the moose apart was going to be rewarding in the end, but the struggle failed him leaving him with a bitter attitude for a moment. McCandless handles his situation positively by accepting the failure and moving on. And that kind of decision is what leads people to success.
 

             Everyone has their own story, background, and their own obstacles in life. It’s those experiences that shape people the way they are. Some people come from a family of poverty and some might come from a privileged family.  McCandless came from a family of privileged, but he did not rest on his family’s support. McCandless, “wanted to prove to himself that he could make it on his own, without anybody else’s help,” (159).  This is a personal struggle for him.  He wanted to show that he was a man that did not need to be provided for.  He didn’t seem to want to be the ordinary American who became a person who free loaded off of their parents.  He had his future projected to what he wanted it to become.  This is what we, as individuals should do in order to become successful.

            Projecting our future at a young age is vital to the outcome of our careers in life.  It may sound like a reiteration, but do we have enough children that have projected futures?  Many of us come into Chabot College not knowing our majors yet.  This is because we haven’t really put any quality time into discovering what it is that we want to do.  We are too distracted by everything that doesn’t really matter.  We are inspired by American society to consume before we are inspired to get the best education.  We should have more billboards that encourage us to think about our future and less billboards that encourage us to buy McDonalds.  This goes for many other aspects of society.  The before-class topics seem to be more about shoes and electronics rather than the subject at hand.  Greed is a feed for major corporations and we need to set our children aside from these distractions.  We need to focus on who we are on who it connects to who we are going to be.  Jon Krakauer said in his book about “…how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong… to measure yourself at least once.”  Krakauer also believes that it is important to measure ourselves at least once!  If not multiple times, like we should.  Measuring oneself is knowing oneself and projecting your future from who you are.  Otherwise we will be thrown around by our society which demands us to do different things which are not in our futures favor.  It is important to know our true identity so that we will know where we stand and what really affects how we think.  Even though there are negative things in society that affect us, there are also positive things.  These ositive things include family, friends, and God whom push us in many ways through words and favors to be thankful for.

            It is important for a student to be thankful for something that will drive them to continue their studies.  Or drive them to do anything for that matter.  Anyone who can find nothing to be thankful for, often seem to complain.  I am personally thankful that my parents are providing for me at the moment.  This is one thing, among others, that drives me to make them proud.  Being thankful gives us a push to fulfill what we are thankful for.  The people who we are thankful too, often do us the favors for a reason.  Whether it be our parents supporting us as we finish school or the belief in God to fulfill what we believe that he wants.  Favors, like these, require thanks and fulfillment.  Jon Krakauer shows his gratitude to the almighty by saying that “It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meanings is found.  God it’s great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.”  He owes and gives thanks unto his God.  From being thankful, he is driven to accomplish many things in life, including the completion of his book, Into the Wild.

            It is also important to build ones confidence in this cruel world.  This world is tough and competitive when it comes to a job or getting into impacted classes.   In the concept of getting into the classes or getting the job, we have the power and strength as an individual to get into what is needed.  But sometimes we just need to feel strong in order to be strong.  Or we just need to feel strong to get by.  We definitely need the confidence and strength to sit there and study.  The feeling of being strong is more important for us to go through it.  Jon Krakauer supports this by saying “Its not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.”  Feeling strong will get us through.  If we were strong, how strong can we possibly get as limited human beings.  How strong can we get if a whole group of people or the power of government was against us? In this case we would be powerless.  But if we just feel strong without being strong, we can overcome the necessary obstacles.

            Some obstacles are necessary to provide us with new and challenging experiences.  To get through it all, we need to grow mental strength and power to overcome these obstacles.  Striving through the tough classes are hard as well, but going through these tough times gives us more experience in order to become more tolerant to whatever, life, throws at us.  Jon Krakauer states that “The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences”.  Education is important for this matter.  We are challenged a lot in highschool or in college.  We are challenged with obstacles such as relationships and the toughest of tests.  But through these we learn to be more tolerant to the challenges in life and to face these challenges head-on and overcome them.  We learn to face the hardest obstacles including global warming and economic depression through the discipline we learn from school and the information that we get from it.  These challenges are the key to success and progression.  If we accomplish things that are too easy for our standards, we will never overcome real challenges that help us grow.  Jon Krakauer supports this by saying that “according to the moral absolutism that characterizes McCandless’s beliefs, a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured isn’t a challenge at all.” We should challenge ourselves through education in order to find our true selves.  We also need to grow tolerance for the obstacles we will be having as adults and through whatever career that we will be having.  

            Society will always have a role in our educational life.  Many people get into majors that aren’t even their first choice.  The factors that change our majors include: The pay rate in the career after graduation, the demand of a major in the economy, or even how bored we might actually be if we were to be in a certain career for the rest of our lives.  When I was young I want to become a cartoonist.  But, as a young girl, I did not know of all the other factors that effected my choice of major.  I just thought it was easy and fun.  Jon Krakauer states that “it is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire Is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is you God-given right to have it.”  As a young girl,  I had my eyes set on becoming a cartoonist.  Little did I know that I would have to pay bills and that there existed so much competition in the world.  Now that I am more aware, with still more awareness to discover, I now have a major in the medical field.  A major in which, I “kind-of” will enjoy. A major in which I will “make that money”.  I am not going to be the cartoonist that I wanted to become when I was a kid.  I am thankful, however, of the choice I am making to become an Occupational therapist who specializes with kids. 

            The truth is that everyone has it different and everyone has a different view.  Everyone has their own story that they can tell.  Through whichever path we take with our majors and through education, we will have to overcome struggles and challenges unless we choose to give up.  Reaching success isn’t easy but it is a huge accomplishment that everyone should strive for.  Through the obstacles such as society and family problems we will feel pressure.  But through these pressures we learn to be more tolerant to the challenges that we are to face within our futures.  These futures do not only involve our career.  But it is through the pressures that we have through our careers and education that we learn to become more patient for things such as world problems.  We become more patient to resolve these world problems such as poverty and global warming.  Even though society encourages us more to buy Mcdonalds than project our futures, it is yet another obstacles to overcome.  We should help our young generation with the projection of their futures so that they would not be led astray.  We should challenge ourselves in many ways in order to discover who we are and compare it to who we are to become.  We should find things to be thankful for in order to be inspired by the people or organization that we thank.  Education is the future of us individuals and it is also the future of our world as a whole.  We can strive through the worlds’ obstacles together.