Challenges: Highly Underrated

In order to succeed in life, one needs to face any sort of challenges or obstacles. When
one encounters these challenges, it makes them stronger and they learn more in the end.
Controversially, challenges are where a person will truly shine and their honest opinions will
prevail in the solutions that are thought of. I aim to embrace the challenges that I face and end
up learning from them and allowing them to help motivate myself. Things are not always as
easy as I want them to be, and I remind myself to stay focused and really choose what's
important to me.
Starting after Freshman year, balancing school and cheerleading has always been
something I always had to consider and think about. As school went on, it only got harder and
cheer became more and more involved. Whether it was highschool or All Star, the pressure
always seemed to be on. Practices were every night and we never had a weekend or Friday
night free. Oftentimes, I would be too tired to move and found just getting homework done to be
difficult. I let the exhaustion just wash over me as it began to affect school, since I would not be
able to wake up in the morning. After eventually getting too frustrated with myself, I realized that
a change needed to be made and I needed to prioritize school work. Even though I couldn’t
physically add more time into my schedule, I started utilizing time before school and directly
after to accomplish my tasks. I found extra practice for the topics I struggled with. Finally
establishing a concrete schedule truly helped me find the balance.
My work ethic was truly developed through this experience because I had to develop it
through pure motivation to change the way I was acting. I always believed I had a little bit of
work ethic before, but struggling so much truly showed how much harder I could've been
working. Without this struggle I don’t think I would be unable to tackle the tough courses that I
do now, or understand the right study course for me. It really helped me to dive deeper into my
brain and understand how I learn, since I had to quickly study for the days that I missed. I
appreciate that it wasn’t handed to me and I had to work for it because it made me understand
what it feels like to be overwhelmed and stressed. Because of these situations, I could learn
from them and use them for future experiences.
One of the values I try to work into my everyday life is personal growth because I feel it
speaks numbers about a person, and anybody can experience it. It’s a topic I see within this
experience since I had to discover how to motivate myself and grow as a person to achieve
what I need. This was an issue that only I could help with and so it became very intrinsic even
when I let my emotions from those feelings affect my outside life. I see this experience as just
one difficult path I had to take, but the lessons I learned from this will be used to guide me
through the next paths.
Having challenges can really help to shape a person and allow them to grow and
discover new things about themselves. Without challenges, we couldn’t learn and would be
defeated after little issues. Allowing ourselves to learn from our challenges is one of the hardest
concepts, but I believe I succeeded a little through my dilemma. Even though cheer brought
extremely stressful times, good memories, and exhaustion, it also allowed me to grow as a
person and discover new things about myself. I don't believe I would be quite the same person
without this challenge, and I encourage everyone to push through and learn from their
challenges too.