Overcoming Adversity

     We, as a society, and as individuals, need to experience some adversity in order to grow and improve ourselves.  This adversity could happen only once, or many times over the course of our lives.  But what adversity have I had to overcome?  A year ago I suffered a left hamstring strain while doing a track workout during the winter.  At that point I had never suffered an injury that would stop me from competing in running, but there were many factors that were involved and were important for me to return from this injury.

    The first factor was patience, and a lot of patience at that.  I was told at the time that it would take 5-8 weeks for my hamstring to fully heal and be at 100%, so I would need to wait in the meantime.  The next factor within that time window was following a consistent recovery schedule.  I would need to consistently do certain exercises, as well as a certain amount of them.  On top of that, I also needed to eat healthy so that I would recover faster, along with the exercises.  The last factor was having a good mentality about the whole situation.  If I didn't think positivity and in the right direction, then the rehab process would've taken much longer than what it did originally.

    Overcoming adversity is what truly makes people who they are.  It can also be hard or challenging on people, whether they have experienced it or not.  Not being able to do what I enjoyed doing everyday was very taxing on me, especially mentally.  It's like an itch that won't go away.  To conclude, a quote from Rachael Bermingham thoroughly describes what adversity can do for people.  "Through adversity, not only are we given opportunity to discover our inner strength, we are also given the gift of foresight so we can shine a light for others who go through the experience after us."

Introduction- Something Unique About Me

    

    What makes someone stand out in a certain way?  Or rather, what makes someone unique in their own way?  This "uniqueness" could be a certain talent, a certain feature that they have, whether that be seeable or not, or even where they come from or who their family/friends are.  For me, I would say what makes me unique is not necessarily my talent, but where I got my talent from, which is my family.

    But, what is my talent, you may ask?  My talent is something that not very many people enjoy, but one I enjoy very much, running.  I've been running since I was very young, though I wasn't training for it seriously until middle school.  But what does this have to do with getting my talent from my family?  My family has had many members that have ran and put a lot of time and effort into running in the past that I have gained knowledge of the sport of running from, as well as getting genes from family members by birth.  My father was a hurdler for Millikin University, a conference rival school of North Central, my mother and her brother were both long distance runners, and by father's brother also ran in high school, and they were all very good at what they did, whether that be sprinting, running for long distances, or sprinting while having to "run over" hurdles.  All of these people I have gained a lot from, and without them running before me, I wouldn't be at North Central at all and would've gone down a completely different path.

    As stated before, I gained my running talent from my family members who did it before me.  I've also gained very much just from them giving me a path to the sport of running.  However, no one is born with talent, not even the best to ever do something, like Michael Jordan with basketball.  He had to put in a lot of time and effort just to be as good as he was, and running is no different.  Talent can only take one person so far, but the combination of talent and a good work ethic at one particular thing is a great combination, and a hard one to beat at that.