Choi 1

Youngjay Choi

Professor Smyrl

ESL 117A.2550

September 7, 2023

Importance of Effort

Students study hard and do not give up on achieving their goals. This means they are

making an effort. Effort is the most important element for our study and also in our future

life. Effort is related to other necessary points of study such as motivation and grit. Grit is

that having a close relationship with effort. Grit is about doing something without giving up

even though it is hard. Each alphabet g, r, i, and t includes the meanings of growth, resilience,

instinct, and tenacity. To be gritty, develop your growth, resilience, instinct, and tenacity. All

of those things show the importance, value, and relationship of effort and grit. In my opinion,

when we make a lot of effort, there is nothing unable to do.

Efforts have a good effect on the growth process of children. Kids will have different

personality, mind, and behavior that depends on how they grow and are educated. This is why

how they are educated by their parents is important. Parents should praise the pros things of

their children. However, complimenting everything is not the right way. When the children

get a good grade on a test, you should not praise how they are smart. You should praise how

they done hard. It leads to children working harder and being more robust. Carol S. Dweck

also has the same opinion. She states about intelligence praised children, “Instead of giving

them confidence, it made them fragile, so much so that a brush with difficulty erased their

confidence, their enjoyment, and their good performance, and made them ashamed of their

work” (Dweck 3). Tell children about their intelligence can bring bad results. She gives an

example of praising, “‘It was a hard project, but you did it one step at a time and it turned out

great!’” (Dweck 4).

 Choi 2

How much the person tries hard can be affected by passion and motivation. Someone

who does not have any passion or motivation to study has no reason to study hard and does

not matter how well he has done. Motivations could be a desire to learn new things, earn a lot

of money, get a good grade, go to a good college, and improve your thoughts. These things

are all related to reasons of exertion. Even if you think it is too late to try hard on something,

it is not true. The solution is to try harder than others. We know this is the right way by

Duckworth’s saying “If you’re going to get through a two-year college where the attrition rate

is 50 or maybe even 75 percent, maybe you do need more grit to surmount all those

obstacles” (Hanford 3). Passion is also one of the big elements that effort is necessary. People

who have a lot of shame usually do not ask questions and do not want to step out. In their

position, they need a lot of effort and be passionate people who do everything actively. With

enough motivation and passion, the effort will follow.

Getting a good grade depends on how much they make an effort. Angela Duckworth's

concept "grit" explores the relationship between achievement, effort, and talent. Some

talented and smart people did not succeed, but some opposite people who did not have high

scores in their studies became an achiever. She wanted to figure out the answer to this issue.

Then she researched a lot and she made the grit test. Here are two topics of this test “‘I have

overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge’ and ‘Setbacks don’t discourage me’”

(Hanford 1). Getting a high score on the grit test has the same meaning as making a lot of

exertion than others. Through the trial, she realized one thing that “a person’s grit score is

highly predictive of achievement under challenging circumstances” (Hanford 1). As we can

see from this result, gritty people have higher possibilities to achieve their goals. Good talent

is not helpful to us, but effort takes more importance.

Tenacity is one of the necessary elements for success. Moreover, not only tenacity but

also exertion is needed. I went to the military one and a half years ago in South Korea. Some
 Choi 3

people went in on the same date. We became very close friends. At first, we got a lot of stress

from one disrespectful person. He always said bad words to others and led his junior in bad

ways. For instance, he made my friend gamble, then my friend lost a lot of his money at the

end. Despite his actions, my friends, and I could not do anything because he was our senior

and higher rank than us. In the military, there is a hierarchical relationship based on rank. The

only things that we could do were endure and try to change him. It was a hard job, but we

changed him 1 year later. We tried to become close and kept saying not to do bad things. We

made many efforts and had tenacity. Something that want to achieve, tenacity is necessary.

Passion helps you to be closer to your goal. First, trying to be more passionate makes

it possible to learn something more. For students, active students who ask a lot and try to

communicate with others will get more information than passive students. I am currently an

international student attending an American university, and I saw so many international

students being very quiet and passive in their college life such as in classes or participating in

clubs or groups. Also, one of the biggest problems is that they spend their time with the same

country students. They do not want to make friends from other countries. I spend the most

time with same country friends. For international students, this might be much easier because

they talk in the same language and either familiar. On the other hand, if they want to improve

their English skills, they have to spend time with other countries people that English is only

possible to communicate with. Now I am exerting to make new friends who speak English,

but these things are very hard before being passionate. In an unfamiliar environment, being

enthusiastic is very hard for international students. The more time like this, the more effort is

needed. Angela Duckworth states in her Ted talk, “Grit is passion and perseverance for very

long-term goals” and “Turns out that grittier kids were significantly more likely to graduate,

even when I matched them on every characteristic I could measure, things like family

income, standardized achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt when they were at
 Choi 4

school” (Duckworth). In her speech, she thinks that grit, passion, and perseverance are

essential for students. Effort and passion are the core elements of success, and without both,

true achievement is impossible.

Effort is necessary for now we study and whatever we do in the future. Many

successful people arrived at that position not only with their talent but also with effort. People

want to do something better than in the past. Otherwise, this is not a hard job. Even just

making an effort makes us a better person. An effort is a hard way and sometimes it needs

more effort, but trying to avoid it is not helpful for life and finally, it will bring proven results.

Try to have grit in mind and learn to be gritty. Therefore, people who keep making an effort

get better results. It is not too late for everyone if you do not make an effort these days, you

should start to work hard now.

 Choi 5

Works Cited

Duckworth, Angela. Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. TED Talk.

https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_p

erseverance?language=ena

Dweck, Carol S. “Brainology.”

https://www.nais.org/magazine/independent-school/winter2008/brainology/

Hanford, Emily. “Angela Duckworth and the Research on ‘Grit’.”

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/grit/angeladuc

kworth-grit.html
 Choi 6

Essay Letter

Dear Professor Smyrl, thank you for reading my essay. Writing my essay was a very

helpful time to me that I can remind myself why making an effort is important, and how I can

study more hard. This essay was my first time writing with an MLA template. At first, there

were so many things that made me confused, but now I perfectly understood it. Also, making

ideas and opinions took a long time for me. I think this is because everything just started now

such as writing this long, quoting things, and making fit on the MLA template. First of all, I

wrote more long. I heard a suggestion that if I told my story as an instance in my essay, that

would look better. Also, Professor Smyrl gave me feedback that there is some way that I can

connect my ideas more smoothly so that I don't jump from one point to the next: effort. then

grit. then growth. All the feedback made me so impressed and thankful.