<p>Hello. Please give feedback on the following essay! Thanks!</p>
<p>Prompt: Is adversity a good thing? (I forgot the exact prompt but this is what it basically means)</p>
<p>When I think of hardships, I think of activities that are difficult for me to do. However, these certain difficult activities are helpful in many ways. Adversity and hardships help us to do discover who we are because they reveal characteristics about ourselves that we would never have obtained.</p>
<p>From my experience, hardships has helped me to discover who I am: a competitor. In middle school, I was placed in the 100m dash against 7 other runners, who were much faster than me. As expected, I placed last and was both devastated and optimistic. I was devastated at the fact that I got last place, but optimistic at the fact that it helped me to train even harder to get to the levels of the runners that beat me. Having failed and learn from that experience is much more valuable than having succeeded in a rather easy task and learn nothing from it. </p>
<p>In the novel, Legend of the Wild, a boy named James learns to face his fears and learn about the true values in life. James, in the beginning of the novel, is portrayed as a very dependent boy. He never took his own inner thoughts into consideration in making decisions and rather asked his peers to make it for him. One day, James gets lost in the wilderness with no one but himself. He senses fear because he only has himself to rely on. As time progresses, he learns to think for himself and realizes that his life cannot be dictated by him. He realizes that when he grows up, his friends and family aren’t going to be there to make his decisions. In entering an uncomfortable atmosphere, he realizes that while friends and family are important, he must make his own decisions and dictate what he will become in the future.</p>
<p>In 1990, a scientist by the name of John Hensley, learns the values of his profession through the tough competition. John Hensley was a scientist who was never known by the public because scientists from his field were the ones getting praised for their works. When Hensley was overcome by the competitive field of his profession, he decides that he should give up in being a scientist. However, his fellow friends advise him to continue to pursue his profession. Hence, he decides to give it a shot one more time and instead tries a different route. In a couple of years, he was nationally acclaimed by the public because of his works and theories. Even though there were many other scientists smarter than him, he was stronger than all these scientists in a particular aspect of science. In overcoming the competition, he discovered that each scientist, including him, has a forte in them.</p>
<p>Through the critical analysis of these examples, hardships aren’t about failures or negative impacts, but rather it’s about how people can overcome these and learn from these failures or hardships. Life is not about succeeding all the time; it’s about progressing and learning new things every day.</p>