Excellence Essay

"The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it." I chose this quote because that is how I view excellence. Being the best at what you do is what I consider excellence. The road to excellence can be extremely tough because of the amount of work and practice you need to put into your job or activity to help you improve.



When I was 13 years old we won the state tournament for baseball. That was my first experience of excellence that I have had. We were the best 13 year old and under baseball team in the state. All of the practicing and the games that we played that summer led up to the state tournament at the end of the summer, where it all paid off. The whole team effort was the most important part of the win. This is because if you have 9 of the 13 players on the team working hard, and the other 4 don't care, they are holding the team down. Therefore, the team won't be as successful.



In the essay, "Looking out for more Blairs" (Ludwig, 2004), it talked about past events where students have cheated during college. The Center of Academic Integrity at Duke University found that on most campuses, over 75 percent of the students that attended that university had admitted to some form of cheating. (Ludwig, 2004)This is important because if the students cheat they will not gain any of the experience, skill or knowledge that would come from completing an assignment or test.

Excellence is being the best that you can be, not cheating yourself of skill and working hard to achieve a goal.