Hills to Climb

From never graduating high school and sitting at home all day most people would say I haven’t had many “hills to climb.” People now a days celebrate sixteen year old’s birthdays, high school graduations, and just making it to the weekend! As if they were the only survivors of the Black Plague.  The liberator of South Africa Nelson Mandela once said, “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”  In today’s society people depend more on the government, are a lot greedier and generally seem to be mean. Yet with this entire people still achieve great things, this is because personal goals and failures give you the achievements that make you keep climbing.

When I dropped out of high school at eighteen it seemed like, and probably still is to my parents, the worst decision I ever made.  For my entire childhood life my mother and father told my sister and I that the public school system was our hill to conquer.  Yet, I never realized that more than when I was about to graduate high school and dropped out instead.  It taught me a lot about how people should consider how other people feel before they make choices. The most important thing to come out of that failure was the personal insight it gave me.  Just because you fail once doesn’t mean you can’t find another way, so that’s exactly what I did.  A couple months after being bored and not seeing my friends I went and took the General Education Diploma Test at Adult Community Education (GED).  No longer should you do things that people project on you.   For true success it takes personal failure and corrections.



Some say that I was selfish about my decision for dropping out.  But, this isn’t about being selfish.  When Nelson Mandela was in jail he must have focused on himself for the pride of his country.  Everyone should realize that you have moments were you should be focused on yourself doing well.  Ironically if you continue to purse your full positional it’s better for everyone!    The months after I passed my G.E.D I felt a huge achievement about coming back and getting a high school diploma.  However, there were many more hills to climb.  My next hill came at trying to find a job in this horrible economy.  Luckily my mother was there pushed me till I got out of the house everyday dressed in button downs and kakis until I found one.  After almost one whole month of walking and driving around in the Tallahassee summer heat I found one, a gas station job.  This was one of the better hills that I climbed, it taught me enormous amount of responsibility and how to deal with things under pressure.  One of the most enjoyable things I found out about trying to reach your goals is sometimes it’s really exciting.  At my job I met a whole new group of people that still help me today conquer ring my new goal, Tallahassee Community College (TCC)!  



So after getting off the couch one workday I went to TCC.  After five hours of running around and taking multiple tests, I was a college student!   This is my best achievement of my life so far and from past failures and experiences I am sure that even if I fall to the bottom again I will be able to come back. The most important thing to remember about climbing and reaching goals is that even after you achieve one, “…there are many more hills to climb.”