Hard Work and Perseverance

This is an essay I wrote in my freshman year of college. It’s not the best, but I decided to post it here anyway. Enjoy!

I believe that hard work and perseverance will result in success. With hard work and perseverance you can do so many things in your life. I have played tennis now for twelve years, and it is definitely a huge part of my life. I have been through very hard times and I have sacrificed for my tennis career a lot, and it’s allowed me to be a stronger, better and more successful person.

As a child, when I played, it was just because my parents wanted me to play tennis, but as I got older, it became more about the sport. The thrill, the challenge, the excitement – I lived for it all. First two years were just for fun. I practiced twice a week and did not think about a professional tennis career. After two years of playing in a big group with bunch of other kids, my coach said to my parents that I am actually very talented player and he sees a potential. That is when I started taking tennis more seriously. That is when the hard work and perseverance started. I was eleven years old when I won my very first tennis tournament. I still can remember that day: I cried, my mom cried and my dad cried. I remember how happy I was and how happy my parents were. After that one win I started to believe that I can be a professional tennis player, and I also got an amazing feeling from my first win that I wanted to win more and more.

I have sacrificed because of my tennis career a lot, and not only me, my whole family. We have moved three times just to give me better opportunities to improve in better conditions. I lived and practiced six months in Czech Republic. I was there by myself, without my parents, friends and far away from home, and I was only fifteen. I have also had to say “No” to a lot of things, like going to movies with my friends, parties and a lot of other things. But I do not regret anything. All these things have made me so many new friends. Just because of my tennis career, I have been to more than twenty different countries around the world. Like in any sport, you can win or lose. I have had so many tough losses in my career, but I feel like they only made me stronger. There were times when I did not have confidence. There was no doubt that the only way to gain self-confidence would be to practice. I began to understand that I couldn’t get much farther without hard work, determination, and perseverance.

So here I am, 20 years old, living and studying in one of the greatest countries in the world, America, and it is all because of my hard work and perseverance in tennis. I am blessed that I have a chance to get a good education and play tennis for college at the same time. I am very thankful to my parents for everything they have done for me. I really like what Steve Jobs once said: “Your time is limited, so do not waste it living someone else’s life. Do not be trapped by dogma – which is living with the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the voice of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” You have to want to be successful and get better in anything you do in your life. You have to be determined. It means spending hours on the court, practicing. It means never giving up. It means when you miss a shot or make a bad decision, you come back even stronger, knowing that in order to succeed, you must first fail. That is what I have learned from my college tennis coach Brett Bridel, and I will never forget his words.

I want to be the best. I want to go far and be successful. I have goals. Only with hard work, determination and perseverance I can do all that. As Donald Trump once said: “I like thinking big. If you are going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.” I also liked what great basketball player Tim Duncan once said: “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best.” These two quotes are one of my all time favorite, and they motivate me a lot.