Excellence Essay

"No man ever reached excellence in any one art or profession without having passed through the slow and painful process of study and preparation". This is a quote from an ancient Roman poet named Horace. It tells you that excellence isn't just something that happens, but something that is acheived over time with hard work and effort. Because of the amount of work required to acheive excellence, some find it too difficult to obtain.


A real life experience I had related to acheiving excellence was my first 4.0 gpa. This happened in 7th grade, and it was the only 4.0 i've ever received up to date. The time I spent in 7th grade was mostly studying for my classes and reading books in my free time. Instead of being with friends every day like some people did, I was reading a textbook. This is a form of excellence because I put so much effort into getting an A in every class.

An article titled "Reading between the lies: a young reporter who stole and made up stories forces the New York Times to take stock" is an example of excellence written by Nancy Gibbs. An African American had been stealing other's stories and revising them to make them seem more interesting. His main goal was to acheive excellence through lies and deceit. Of course, this only worked until he was caught and his life was ruined. The lesson to be learned from this is not to cheat your way to acheive excellence.

Another example is from the story, Lord of the Rings. A halfling named Frodo Baggins was set off on a journey to destroy an evil ring of power. Before the temptation of this power totally consumed him, he was able to accomplish this task. Even though this job was brought up upon him by the work of others, he still acheived excellence and superiority over others. My point in this story is simply excellence can be obtained even when it is not necessarily wanted.