C.

Rapley Hills

Professor Fetsch

Significant People

1 February 2023

To start off, the most important event in my life is high school rowing. I did it from

eighth grade until I graduated, and it made me who I am today. The list of lessons that I learned

from it would be extremely lengthy, but if I had to pick the three most beneficial, they would be

teamwork, trustworthiness, and compromise. Teamwork is something that applies to any sport,

but it especially applies to rowing since there are typically eight people confined to one boat.

Each person must be perfectly in sync with the next, which also involves a lot of trust. Trust is

imperative in any group that is attempting to achieve a goal; this applies to rowing in the sense

that one person cannot row an entire boat by themselves. There must be trust between each seat.

Compromise was one of the most valuable lessons I learned because it was not something I had

to do very much before rowing. Spending every day with the same people can always lead to

conflicts, so disputes happened frequently at practice. A lot of us discovered that we could

achieve a lot more if we gave some and took some.

One significant person in my life is my best friend Adam. We met in fourth grade, and we

immediately became best friends. We have both grown from and influenced each other, whether

that was in our music taste, relationships with friends, or different foods. His family is from

Great Britain, so I got the privilege of experiencing some of the differences in our cultures. His

family has been a great influence to me, as they are like a second home to me. Him and his

family have extremely different political views than me, and they were probably the reason that I
discovered the concept of different points of view. I have learned a lot on how to respect other

opinions, thanks to their openness when talking to me.

Within my family, two people that are significant to me are my parents. They are both

extremely different people, so they have affected who I have become in a lot of different ways.

To start off, my mom is very extroverted and headstrong. She is much more influential in my

path of becoming a leader. She’s a politician, so a lot of leadership and responsibility comes with

that, but some of the things that I have learned from her are how to stay firm in my convictions

and how to bite my tongue in some conversations. Both of these are equally important to me

because knowing when to be quiet is equally important as knowing when to speak up.

As for my dad, he is an extremely level headed man. The most important thing I have

learned (and am still learning) is patience. I remember when I began to realize the importance of

patience, and that was when I was sixteen and was trying to fix a window on my first truck with

my dad. We had been at it for hours, and I told my dad that we should give up. Then, I vividly

remember my dad turning to me and saying, “Well I am going to stay here and fix it, so would

you like to stay or not?” From then on, I have realized that in order to achieve any task, I will

need to exercise a great deal of patience.

I would not say that I have “heroes,” but my top six people that I look up to are Iron Man,

Obi-Wan Kenobi, George Washington, Donald Trump, my aunt, and one of my coaches from

rowing. Iron man is direct, confident, witty, loyal, and eccentric. Obi-Wan Kenobi is kind,

charming, level headed, morally good, and a quick learner. George Washington was patriotic,

strong and quiet, a natural leader, loyal, and patient. Donald Trump is direct, forthright, blunt, a

visionary, and a strategist. My aunt is loving, selfless, thoughtful, caring, and optimistic. My

rowing coach is funny, creative, demanding, serious when he has to be, and encouraging.
 By creating this list, I have realized that a lot of the people that I look up to most are very

straight forward people. I try to be as efficient as possible with a lot of the actions that I take, so

it is no wonder that a lot of my “heroes” are very serious in what they do. The two that are not as

similar to the rest are my aunt and my old rowing coach. This is probably because these are

people that I would like to be more like. Although all of the people that I listed have plenty of

flaws, I believe that there needs to be a balance between all of the qualities listed above in order

to be a well rounded person.