Success

Honors English II
22 January 2013
Success
Some might say that success is reaching a goal.   This is only half of the truth.   I would define success as the process you go through to complete a task.   This process may be hard and require talent, or it can be as simple as doing it when nobody else has; either way, success feels great.
A hard working student, let’s call her Sally, always listens to the teacher in class.   Sally does her homework every single night.   In preparation for tests, Sally studies, sometimes to the edge of dawn.   In reflection of Sally’s hard work, the graded test laid on her desk has a perfect score written right on the top.   The work Sally has done has paid off, and Sally feels successful.
A student who is the total opposite of the good student Sally is, let’s call him Joey, pays all his attention in class to a texting conversation under the desk.   Joey’s idea of finishing homework is copying other students’ answers, without a thought in mind.   The only things Joey studies until dawn are status updates.   When it comes to tests, Joey relies on a neighbor’s paper.   When the teacher handed the tests back Joey has a one hundred percent.
It doesn’t take studying to realize that this doesn’t exactly match up.   Cheating and dishonesty was involved making this “success” not belong to Joey but to Sally who actually did listen in class and did her homework and then studied that homework until she knew it inside and out.   Only two people out of the entire class had one hundred percent accuracy on the test.   Sally and all the other students know how Joey is when it comes to schoolwork.   Joey had cheated off of Sally.   Sally’s pride in her hard work is diluted down knowing that all Joey had done successfully is cheated resulting in a good grade.   Joey didn’t even care about what grade was on the top of the paper.   Joey hadn’t done the work.
Success isn’t just how hard something was to accomplish, but also who else had accomplished the task big or...