Blog Post 2 - Family Helps me Succeed Academically

First things first: I believe that success is largely subjective. I believe that it is measured on an individual basis and that it involves doing and being better than you were yesterday. Because this definition is moderately broad, it follows that most preventions of success are directly related to a person’s own motivation and cannot be attributed to some external negative. With this in mind, the driving force behind my academic success is, undoubtedly, my family. I think a lot of people neglect how important it is, having people in your life who encourage you to do hard things and push yourself to the limit. Whenever I’m having a particularly tough time at school, I am always reminded of how lucky I am to have my family – when I’m exhausted at the end of the day, my dad will offer to pick me up so that I don’t have to take the bus home, my mom will often cook me dinner, and my sister will frequently do my chores. They do this so that I have time to fully devote myself to my education; they do this because they want me to succeed. As a matter of fact, when I didn’t do well with a speech at a forensics tournament this past weekend, my mom even offered to sit down and walk through the speech with me. (She’s pretty awesome, my mom ;)).