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Kaya Rodrigues

Mrs. Cox

English 9 Honors

22 March 2017

Future-Forward

Ambition. Goal setting. Your Future.

All of these have something in common; they can and will determine how your life is

lived out. For the last few weeks, we have been talking about ambition. Ambition is a funny

thing; it can be very good, and is often viewed as such in society. However, if ambition gets the

better of you and morphs into greed, it can make your hard work seem counterproductive.

Ambition needs to be kept in check so that it doesnt go out of hand.

If you ask me, ambition has been gaining a rather negative connotation after having read

Macbeth by William Shakespeare and A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Turning a humble

hero into a monster; a best friend into an enemy That's just not how we want life to work! So,

sure, we can blame it all on ambition but this is difficult, as ambition isn't a tangible thing, a ball

I can throw around; however as psychologist Dean Simon of UC Davis puts it, ambition is

energy and determination.

So it isn't necessarily the ambition that is bad. It shouldn't be viewed negatively, it just

needs to be utilized correctly. As the old saying goes, too much of a good thing can be bad.

I like to think that we can control to what degree we use our ambition. And I like to think

that goalsetting is the way to go in order to do this.

When I was younger, in elementary school, I recall always being asked what my goals

were. Of course I thought this was just some silly work. But in six grade my mom explained that
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goals drive us towards our success. She explained I don't always have to win or be first, and that

I should write down my goals and let some close friends and family know about them, as I would

feel more dedicated to them. So I wrote down just a few long-term goals and I taped them to my

wall so I could see them and remember why

Why I was getting up at five in the morning to jump in the freezing cold water with 40

other miserable children

Why I was running through the same lines and motions over and over again always being

picked apart by cranky old director.

Why I was going to do whatever I had to do to finish this project on time. I like to think

that ambition, in it's purest form, gives us a purpose. And the biggest question of all time

What is our purpose in life?

Man, do I hate that question! Such a vague, broad question. To have one collective

purpose would make life so bland! Ambition drives your purpose. If you want to drop time in a

swim or track event, if you want to get that specific part in the play, if you want to get into your

dream school That! That is your purpose. Your purpose is to work until you can hit that mark.

You can have many purposes in life. But when does ambition become obsession? When

your purpose is to be at the top. That's when. When it becomes arrogance or conceit, an inability

to live without power, as quoted from Warren Bennis, a USC professor of business

administration.

Just recently, we had the first high school swim meet of the season. Of course I was

thrilled to have dropped a large amount of time on my race, even if I wasn't in the top three

places for the entire event. I did win my heat, but that wasn't the point; my personal best had just

gotten a whole lot better. Other people around the meet though, were getting frustrated because
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they didn't win. So I would ask what their times were. As soon as they would say how much they

dropped, I would get excited, and they either came to terms with it, or continued to be angry

about it.

Positivity is key. If you're feeling particularly negative, then your efforts are going to

prove fruitless. Once you reach a goal, you can keep going. I am hoping to keep dropping time.

Then, perhaps, one day, I'll be able to make it to first place overall. And while that will be fun, it

is not going to be my stopping point. No. And why? Because I refuse to let it be that way!

Because I am going to continue setting goals for myself, first or last, and you should too!

Google defines ambition as a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically

requiring determination and hard work.

Ambition, as I was saying, gets a bad wrap. All because of these stories, because of

jealousy! And the reason we may think negatively of ambition is because we ourselves lack

ambition! Because the person next to you is succeeding, and you want to be in their place, but

youre so busy being angry about it that you cant take a moment for yourself to just focus on

YOUR goals.

So, I encourage all of you. At this moment, lean back in your chairs. Relax. Close your

eyes if you like. Imagine something that you love to do. Imagine something that you feel you are

really good at, or maybe something you just want to be good at. Not something that people think

you should be good at. Just something that you personally love.

Now think of what you can do to be better at that. What can you do, what specific course

of action can you take to improve upon this skill. I am telling you right now, you CAN do this.

You can.
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What is your plan? Your goal? Think about it. What are you shooting for? Perhaps by the

end of the season, you want a certain time in your backstroke, or you want to score a certain

number of goals. Maybe you are striving for an A on this speech, so youll go home and rehearse

it until you know youll knock it out of the park. Whatever your goal is, realize it is going to take

some hard work to achieve it.

Now, you are all aware that it is going to take some work to achieve your goal. But how

many of you are actually going to put in the work to make sure that this happens? Go ahead,

raise your hands.

That is how many of you have ambition. Determination. Energy. A drive to succeed.

Thats right. Not a drive to be at the top. Nowhere in the definition of ambition does it say

that you have to beat someone. Nowhere in the definition of ambition does it define your

success. Your success is exactly that; yours.

At the end of the day, ambition isnt the culprit. Its our fault if we let it get out of hand. If

we let ourselves become Gene, and make Finny fall out of the tree, then later on, making

ourselves think It struck me then that I was injuring him again. It occurred to me that this could

be an even deeper injury than what I had done before as a consequence to our actions.

If we go from Macbeth the Hero to Macbeth the Murderer, striving to kill the joy in our lives. If

we just use it correctly; if we set up goals and realize that ambition is the energy that is driving

us to get there, nothing can go wrong.

So get out there. Be competitive. Hold yourself to what you want to achieve. Be future-

forward. Yes, like fashion forward, but with the future. Be ambitious, just stay true to who you

are.
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Works Cited

Ambition. Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/ambition. Accessed

23 Mar. 2017.

Borzykowski, Bryan. Ambition: Do You Need It To Succeed? BBC.com. 06 Aug. 2014.

Harrington, Samantha. Dont Be Afraid To Be An Ambitious Woman. Forbes. 03 Jan. 2017.

Kluger, Jeffrey. Ambition: Why Some People Are Most Likely to Succeed. Time. 06 Nov.

2005.

Knowles, John. Separate Peace. Place of Publication Not Identified, Simon & Schuster Ltd,

2016.

Kristof, Nicholas. The Age of Ambition. Nytimes.com. 27 Jan. 2008.

Samuelson, Robert. The Downside Of Ambition. RealClearPolitics. 17 Oct. 2007.

Shakespeare, William. The Arden Shakespeare: Macbeth. Edited by Sandra Clark and

Pamela Mason, Bloomsbury, 2015.