Look on the Bright Side of My Achievements

Throughout everyone’s life they are surrounded by negative people and their thoughts and numerous negative environments. It is your own choice as to whether you are going to see the world in a positive or a negative aspect. As for myself, I chose to try my best to live my life as an optimist. It is not realistic to say that I am an optimist about every single aspect of my life. However, there are many times in particular where I am optimistic about certain situations.

This first situation is when I was born I had clubbed feet. In other words, my feet were turned 180 degrees towards each other. The doctors did not think that I could walk, as I grew older. They were determined to do what they could to get me to walk. I was put through 5 surgeries on each foot, put in casts, orthopedic braces all by the time I was 5 years old. The doctors in the end proved my parents, themselves, and myself wrong, because here I am today walking.

By having gone through all this I grew up to see the positive sides of many things such as running and sports and much more because I was not expected to be able to participate in these activities.

As I grew up, I had a passion for swimming and playing volleyball. I was on the Varsity Volleyball and Varsity Swim Teams in high school, and could not wait until my senior seasons of my favorite sports.

Unfortunately, the third week of my volleyball season I was informed that I had fractured my talus and also had a few stress fractures. At that point I had never been more devastated. Through all the doctor appointments and therapy with my schools trainer I held my head high. I still attended every single game, practice and tournament with my team. I still led them in cheers, and poured my heart to them from the bench. It felt like a knife stabbing through the heart watching from the bench, but I had to be them for them, we were family.

This experience helped me learn how to take an extremely difficult time period and put an optimistic spin on it. I wanted to be there cheering for my team, I wanted to see the win and losses. I did not want to be upset and depressed about the situation because there was nothing I could do about it, the only thing I could do was cheer until I had no voice. And that’s exactly what I did.

The last situation that I have is a current situation that I am dealing with. It is my choice as to where I was going to attend school after I graduated high school. I am attending Northern Virginia Community College. This was not my first choice of schools, and I was extremely upset about this at first. I saw my friends leave Manassas and go their separate ways. They did not live with their parents, and had no super vision. Everything that they had, I wanted. But after church on Sunday I was more of thinking than listening to my priest’s homily. But I realized that I have just as much if not more than they do. I appreciated that my parents were allowing me to live with them and pay for my bills and education. I was grateful that I was able to work and make money while still attending school. From there, I was pleased with the decision of attending NOVA. It was just how I perceived the situation.