An Ode to My Father

Please describe your relationship with someone that has pushed you to excel at

Some thing and how that motivation has carried into other aspects of your life.

At the ripe old age of four, I received my first bicycle – actually a tricycle, but who’s counting wheels? My very first sidewalk venture on this tricycle landed me on the pavement with skinned knees, a good cry, and a bruised ego. Already, I was eyeing my lovely pink gift with suspicion, chewing the idea over that perhaps the tricycle would be better to admire from afar rather than ride. I probably would have settled upon my notion and stuck to it with an immovable dedication had my father not picked me up and set my bottom back on the hot pink seat (after wiping away my tears of course). And then three years later, when I was giving my very best to upgrade to the treacherous bicycle that all of my friends had somehow already mastered, it was my father who hounded and poked and prodded until I could complete a successful circle around the driveway without falling over.

My father always had the bravery and love for adventure that I lacked even as a child, but because of him I have seen firsthand what it is to not give up. I have inherited a willful stubbornness when it comes to, well, anything. Being told it cannot be done by others or even by myself is my call to battle. I have especially taken this to heart when it comes to academics, an area of my life that my father has many times encouraged me to get back up, dust myself off, and ask for some more. I took the hardest classes with the hardest teachers simultaneously. I retook the ACT four times because I was unsatisfied with anything but my best; meaning I voluntarily returned over and over for a grueling, four hour test. I have pushed through all-nighters where I have watched the sun come up through the library windows just to know that I have beaten the material into submission.

Now, despite many setbacks and stumbles, I refuse to give up the hardest academic and career path offered. Unlike my impulse to concede defeat after falling off the pink tricycle, I daily have the urge to push myself further and pick myself up when I know I have a long, hard road ahead. Perhaps, I would like to think that I have done all this alone, but that is not the case. I am who am and have come thus far because someone once taught me what not to give up means, and he has never given up on me since.