<p>Does this topic work for something that goes unnoticed in your life? </p>
<p>Learning how to organize my life is without doubt one of the hardest things I have learned. High school was a completely foreign concept to me as a freshman and my grades reflected the lack of structure in my life. I finished my freshman year with a measly 2.6 overall GPA. To me, this was unacceptable. I spent my summer poring over glorified ‘self help’ books to no avail. This caused me to give up reading books that proclaimed to be the ‘magic cure’ and just reading for the joy of reading. One dreary day, I randomly picked up Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. This random event, unnoticed by anybody, would influence my whole life. </p>
<p>It was a book that commanded my attention from the first page. The novel described in detail of how Dr. Frankl was captured by Nazis during the second world war and how he coped with life in a concentration camp. This book taught me something that is not in any academic curriculum by providing a quote that I abide by: “He also mentioned what may have been the real reason for [other prisoner’s] death: giving up hope.” This quote struck home because that is exactly what I had done with my high school career; I had given up hope of getting into a good university. The book taught me to never give up hope; that if men and women could find something to live for in a concentration camp I could find a way to get my academic life back on track. After the I finished the book, I soon made a plan of action just as Dr. Frankl did 60 years ago. I concentrated at getting one thing done at a time then moving on to a different piece of the puzzle. It was not a quick fix, but in the months leading up to my sophomore year I painstakingly worked with my plan of action to organize my life and remain stress free. This hard work paid its dividends in the form of almost a full point increase in my cumulative GPA with the ability to take on more responsibilities in my extracurricular life without the pressure my peers were experiencing. This is the accomplishment I pride above all else.
While almost all things fade in and out of our life, assignments, athletics, jobs, friends, the latest technology, and homework, the lessons taught by Man’s Search For Meaning will never leave my memory. The lessons from Man’s Search For Meaning showed me how to succeed in life, and as a result I am a happier, more successful person. Nobody until now has known my secret of how I transformed from a C student to an A student. But it is all thanks to one book that told me to never give up hope. </p>