For our final essay submition in class we were told to write an essay about anything we believe in. The only guidelines of this essay was that it can only be 250 words max. Sound easy right? Wrong, having such a small word limit can be hard to work with. So, posted below is my attempt at meeting the only guidelines set in place while still making it personal and telling a story. Enjoy!

This I Believe

I believe adversity reveals a person’s true strengths. It is the desire to overcome a rough situation that reveals a person’s fortitude. Whenever I think this, I think a experience I had in high school.

                I was called into a meeting of about a dozen other people to discuss the current team dynamic and how things needed to be corrected. The main topic of this meeting was respect and how as teammates we need to respect one another. However, what occurred after was anything but respectful. In order for everyone to voice their opinions about what needed to be corrected in order to restore the team back to “normal” was for everyone to write down their issues. But out of respect, the topic I thought we had just discussed the importance of, I didn’t write a single word down.

                When everyone had written their thoughts down on paper, they were collected then read aloud. To be honest I didn’t expect many of the papers to have anything written about me. Turns out I was wrong; almost all of them had some relevance to me or my actions. While the papers were read aloud, I was forced to sit there and keep quite. I was unable to defend myself and ultimately silenced.

                This experience revealed strengths I did not even know I had. That day I learned that by withstanding the pain I experienced during that meeting and even after, I was mentally stronger for enduring such an adversity.