Burlington High School
Burlington, Kansas
Teacher: Mrs. Parker
Excellence in America
By Kyle Manwaring
12th grade
As I walk into the school in the morning, the mood is like that of a funeral. Everyone is tired and gloomy from their long night of sleep and would rather be at home. When the bell rings, everyone methodically stands up to go to first hour. As the day progresses, the routine of school life continues. Finally, at the end of the day, everyone goes home and finishes their homework. These routines can be very boring and lack the certain excellence that is needed in life. Americans today simply go through the motions during everyday life. I now see the lack of excellence has spread all over America.
I truly believe the America people have abandoned the pursuit of excellence. While our government is still trying to provide the best, the citizens of this great nation are giving up. We expect our government to provide us with everything, but for them to achieve success, high standards are needed. There has to be a few good men (or women) that go above and beyond and set their goals high. These few overachievers are the individuals that will later run this country. If they didn’t have excellence in their lives, our government would ultimately fall and our nation would crumble. I think in order to make our nation stronger and long lived, the citizens need to work hard to strive for the excellence that is needed.
The last time that our whole nation has truly been together when striving for excellence was World War II. Everyone in the nation banned together to defeat the Nazis. We all did our part to save gas, food, and other economic products. The nation was striving for excellence because we were under the threat of world domination. No one wanted to be under the control of the Nazis, so naturally everyone did their part. It shouldn’t take a world war to bring everyone together. It should be done within the hearts of all the people of everyday life.
As Howard W. Newton once stated, “People forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well you did it.” I think this is very true in the fact that many people do their jobs today, but they don’t always do them well. People show up to work or school everyday, and go through the motions. It can be shown in our economy, as it has dropped severely over the last four years. Millions of people are jobless and aren’t willing to do anything about it. They sit around and wait for a job to come to them. Part of this problem can be blamed on the president. He has rarely addressed our own nation’s crises, and is focused more on the Middle East. Our president has failed to achieve excellence in America, and he doesn’t plan on changing it. Without a proper leader our nation can look up to, how can anyone else want to achieve excellence for themselves? The days of Clinton’s prosperous nation are over, and now we the people have to look within ourselves to find the will to achieve.
With the exception of a few, all people look for the easy way out. Finding the easiest or quickest way to do something is now what America is all about. If we can make money without having to work for it, then we think that is great. The only exceptions are athletes. For example, look at the pro football players. They have to work hard all year round to make themselves the best they can be. If they want to get paid then they have to work hard. Another great example was last summer’s Olympics. The athletes that competed had to be the best in order to play in the games. Every day in the life of one of these athletes, they are working as hard as they can to achieve excellence. I know this is different than excellence in a job or school but not to these athletes. This is their life and they want excellence in their own way.
Sometimes it can be shown that Americans today don’t believe in excellence. They go though the motions in everyday life just to get a task completed. There is no striving for excellence, or even a hint of encouragement for our nation. Simply put, no one cares whether or not they succeed anymore. Our government doesn’t encourage our schools or workplaces to light a fire underneath us. No one tries to make us do our best, so naturally we are lazy. I think that if a few good people in this nation would start to care, excellence would spread throughout the nation once again. It shouldn’t take a world war to get our nation to strive to be its best; it should occur within everyone, everyday. It is truly sad to see that this lack of excellence has spread all over America, and I would like to see this changed.
Answers To Questions Re: Required Reading
Ask Yourself:
Q1- Am I
really where I want to be?
I think I should have focused more on my life long
career earlier in high school, but on the other hand I think I have achieved
what I wanted.
Q2- Am I
moving in the direction that will enable me to make the greatest
contribution?
Yes, I do think that with my future plans I can place a great
impression on our nation.
Q3- If I
could achieve my highest goals, what would my accomplishments look like?
If I could achieve my highest goals that I wanted, I would be working for the
CIA or the DEA
Q4- Do I
recognize excellence and search it out or do I find mediocre acceptable and am
willing to settle?
I don’t settle for anything less than the best. It is
shown in my school work, jobs, and sports. I will not fail in this one and
only life I have.
Q5- Do I
seek out people, books, movies and other things that encourage me to be the
best I can be?
I believe that I sometimes do seek out help to make me a
better person, but a lot of the time I wait for the help to come to me.
Q6- Do I
recognize the best in others? I like to think that I recognize the best in
others. I look for their qualities and try to see what they really want in
life.
Time Article
Q7- Do you agree with
Morrow (paragraph seven) that: "Excellence demands standards. It does not
usually flourish in the midst of rapid, hectic change. This century’s sheer
velocity has subverted the principle of excellence; a culture must be able to
catch its breath."
I do agree with him in this paragraph. Our country has
gone through many changes and events in recent history. The styles are always
changing, and people are becoming more radical.
Q8- Interpret this quote
from paragraph nine: "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion."
This quote is
trying to say that if someone has prospered, they should take it slow. They
cannot get over confident or set there excellence to high, or they will fail.
Q9- Argue pro and con
Morrow's contention that "Americans not yet successful (the struggling, the
underclass) are apt to aim at ease, not excellence"?
I think that this is
very true that the struggling or the underclass aim at ease. They want a
quick relief from their struggles but they don’t want to achieve excellence.
On the other hand, do they really deserve a break? If they would have strived
for excellence in the first place, would they be in this position now. There
are many different positions that could be taking on this topic.
Q10- Explain what Morrow
means when he says (A) "the confusion contaminates character and disables
ambition." Do you agree?
Everyone in the world wants the easy way out.
There are always exceptions of a few people who want excellence in the lives
but cannot escape from everyone else’s thoughts. I do agree that our world
has disabled its own ambitions.
Q11- Argue pro and con
the effect of over stimulation and under stimulation as discussed in paragraph
10.
Over stimulation creates too many distractions for someone that is trying
to achieve excellence. Our economy is booming with all sorts of mechanical
devices that distract everyone. If we had no distractions, people would go
insane trying to achieve success 24/7. Some distractions are needed to
balance out our lives.
Q12-
Contrast practical excellence with metaphysical excellence as used in Morrow's
last paragraph.
I think that he
is trying to show that metaphysical excellence is something that isn’t
relevant to our lives. Unlike physical excellence, we can see what we are
doing in our life and it is something that we want to achieve.
Q13- Copy and interpret
your two favorite quotes. Explain why you chose them. “I am the master of my
fate, I am the captain of my soul,” William Henley. -
I believe that this is
trying to explain that everyone is in control of their own fate in life. You
can only achieve true excellence when you want to.
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself,” Ralph Waldo Emerson. I think that this person was trying to say is that you cannot be happy unless you are achieving excellence in your life. If you don’t complete everything you want to in your life, you might look at yourself as a failure.