Ice hockey

            My Philosophy "You can only appreciate things that are fun after you work hard to achieve them." Fortune Cookie, 2000 My philosophy of life is that if you work hard enough, you will achieve the things you want. In other words, "Practice makes perfect." The feeling that you get from having fun is great, but it is important to work hard to achieve this "fun" thing. The feeling of having fun is irrelevant if hard work was not involved in achieving it. An example to illustrate this point is when someone begins a new sport. At first, you will be bad at the sport and will have a great deal of difficulty, but with hard work and a great deal of practice, improvement will become possible. I can relate this to my personal experiences with ice hockey. I had never played before this past October and had only skated four times in my life. From October until the season ended in March, I practiced every Monday and Wednesday. I felt that I was working very hard at getting better and by March, I could actually perform adequately and no longer embarrassed myself every time I go on the ice. I felt very good about my achievement in this sport. Another example of feeling a sense of satisfaction from hard work happened from my last biology exam. I studied more than I had ever studied for a biology test before. Many hours of review were put into this particular unit of study. I studied both at home and in support class. The final product of all this effort was a 99 percent on my test. Never before did I do this well on any test. The feeling I had when Mrs. Wysocki handed me back my test was fantastic. I felt a true sense of achievement because of all the time and effort I put into studying. My third and final example of feeling a sense of satisfaction from hard work happened last year in baseball. I wasn't the fastest kid on the team, or the longest hitter, and I didn't have an exceptionally strong throwing arm, but I had a lot of heart and luck.