Excellence

The American Heritage dictionary defines “excellence” as a state, quality, or condition of excelling; superiority. I agree with this definition, I feel that to be excellent at something you have to be the best you can be. In today’s society people will do anything to achieve excellence an example can be found in Nancy Gibbs’, “Reading Between the Lies: “A young reporter who stole and made up stories forces the New York Times to take stock,”. In the story, the reporter does this to get ahead and feel valued, and that is where I feel the line to achieving excellence is crossed.

I feel what causes something to have value is when we have a memory of a time when we excelled at that event and that thing reminds of this. An example is when I shot a 19 pound Canadian goose the first time I went hunting. After shooting the goose I got it mounted. Now every time I look at that goose it reminds me of a time I excelled at hunting and that is why I value that goose.

I feel that people can achieve excellence as long as they work hard and have bit of luck. I feel that people achieve excellence by practicing and never giving up. For example Derrick Jitter wanted to play for the New York Yankees since he was little. Since he had this dream he never gave up and practiced hard, and when he got older he played for the Yankees, therefore achieving excellence.

I think that people do feel a lot of pressure to achieve excellence and as a result they cheat. I think that people cheat because they want to achieve excellence but they do not want to work hard. Also people cheat because, our society demands excellence and we do not want to stick out so they cheat.

Overall, I feel that people can achieve excellence and they do not have to cheat to reach it. For example, I shot the Canadian goose and I did not cheat and now I value that a lot more then if I would have cheated. Also I feel that everyone achieves excellence at something and that is why we do not need to cheat to achieve excellence at other things.