Yesterday, I had an exam. It was about Integral Calculus. It was, in my own opinion, a very, very challenging one despite the three nights I spent for review and all practical preparations. We are 42 in the class, all present and aiming to pass it.
Passing that integration exam was indeed like inserting a thread through the needle hole yet we still hope that we will not fail. The result however showed that many of us did not pass the exam. They did not succeed on their goal. Fortunately, I was not one of them. Upon posting the result, I immediately viewed it and after knowing I did pass, my heart pounded so hard that it made me scream for joy.Yes, I passed that integration exam.
I achieved what I wanted and it brought happiness to me. I could say that I was successful in passing that exam. Success is what I thought of at first before I did my review, before doing the preparations, and before taking the exam. Success was what all of us who passed that exam experienced.
All of us want to be successful but what is success anyway?Success, in dictionary definition, means the achievement of something planned, desired or attempted. It can be as simple as waking up early in the morning or as complex as becoming an astronaut. People may have different desires but all share something in common and that is to become successful in achieving their desires.Humans, for me, are the most amazing thing God had ever created.
What makes us most amazing is our ability to think, to comprehend, to feel, etc. Compared to animals and plants, we are able to make our sustainable life support to propel our existence. We are able to change the environment into what we want it to look like. We are able to compute, analyze and test our skills. We are able to recognize our problems and are able to do something to resolve it.However, problems never left us since time immemorial.
Our everyday needs are a good source of problems. Let’s just state for example the millions of people who go to bed hungry. The conflict between people we know is a problem since humans appeared. Achieving world peace is a big, big problem.Success can be the end of these problems.
Many people want to elevate from their current condition. How do they do it? I say there are three ways in becoming successful. These are:1. Designing a plan;2. Ask for help; or3. Trust in miracles.
The first is the most preferred way since, just like what I said, we humans are capable of making logical decisions that will bring about change in our environment. And to do it, we need to set-up a plan. Plans can come from logical or weird ideas, and later on set to an organized step by step process. Before I took the exam, I made a plan in passing it. I scheduled my activities and made efficient use of my time.
I reviewed, practiced, and tested my skills over and over until I figured out how to solve a particular integration problem. My hard work paid off when I reaped what I sowed. I was successful in my plan; I was successful in passing the exam.The second way is much less popular but pretty useful in some way.
The second way is about asking for help from someone in order to achieve what I want. For example, instead of taking the exam, I’d rather ask my teacher to give me a passing mark in the exam even if I did not take it. Or, putting it to a more sensible context, I could ask my teacher to let me pass the exam in exchange of something she’d want me to do. It is simply asking for kindness. I said it is useful in some way since we all know how beggars live just by asking for a penny or two.
And it works. We can attain success just by asking for help!The third way is a very unlikely way for a logical person. It is about believing for some miracles to happen and cause change. Back to my example, instead of taking the exam, in reference of the third way in achieving success, I’d rather lie down, relax, and hope that I will pass the exam. It’s very illogical, is it? However, many people still rely on this way—they hope that they will achieve what they wanted just by believing in miracles without working for them.
In the end, success can only mean one thing: happiness. We face problems everyday and we want to eliminate these problems. By eliminating it, we mean success which can be attained in three ways as defined above. Success is the fulfillment of one’s dreams, hopes, plans, desires, endeavor, etc.
and it brings happiness to us.
